A vacant building in Port Washington North may become Long Island’s next television studio.
The commercial property on Channel Drive, now owned by East Setauket-developer Parviz Farahzad, was the former headquarters of Publishers Clearing House.
Farahzad is the founder of Little Rock Construction and the owner of Grumman Studios, a studio space that sits on a 30-acre site in Bethpage. It is the former property of Grumman Corp., which made the lunar modules that carried the first man to the moon.
The Channel Drive site sits on over 13 acres and currently includes two empty office buildings. Farahzad is proposing to convert the single-story building to Grumman’s sister studio, according to Newsday.
No application has been filed in the village, according to village Clerk Palma Torrisi.
Farahzad said in an interview with Newsday that the Port Washington site is “an ideal location for another studio on Long Island.” He cited the property’s size, proximity to New York City and short distance to the train as contributing factors for it to be a successful studio.
He plans to demolish the ceiling, eliminate the columns and “build the new studio within the footprint of the one-story building” and then divide the space into six separate units to lease to production companies, according to Newsday’s report.
He told Newsday that the studio would bring economic benefits to the area.
Efforts to reach Farahzad were unavailing.
Farahzad approached the village board earlier this year to request that it allow him to use the site’s parking lot to store cars from a nearby dealership in order to obtain revenue while the site was vacant.
Patchogue-based bld architecture is the contracted architectural firm for the studio project.
