Nassau County hires Insignia.

Insignial/ESG has been chosen by Nassau County to spearhead a building consolidation plan for the fiscally- challenged Long Island county. This past May, the county issued an REP seeking a strategic real estate planning firm. The response generated some heated competition between firms.

"We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape the landscape of Nassau County government and provide a more habitable work environment for county employees," said Sheldon Cohen, head of Nassau County's real estate planning and development office.

Insignia will work for Nassau County free of charge, though certain "rights" will be offered to the firm. Insignia was not the lowest bidder for the job, but Nassau officials apparently swayed the firm into doing the work gratis.

"We have over 2,000 pieces of real estate all over this county. It's our hope to privatize a lot of these properties," said a spokesman from the County Executive's office.

He added that he and his colleagues "have a lot of work to do" with respect to bolstering Nassau County. The overall real estate plan will get refined over the next few weeks,' according to the spokesman.

The consolidation plan will attempt to develop five county campuses to house most of the government here.

The Building Consolidation Plan will organize county government facilities into several "campuses,". designed to house government departments together that perform related functions.

"A perfect example of what is wrong with our current real estate footprint is that county police function--exclusive of the precincts--is now located in 11 different sites including our Police Headquarters," said County Executive Thomas Suozzi. "We want to consolidate this area, along with the rest of county government, to increase efficiency and minimize waste," he said.

Suozzi--who was elected last year--is the first Democrat to occupy the seat in many years. His predecessor, Thomas Gulotta, has been credited with pushing the county to the edge of bankruptcy during his long term.

Nassau County boasted the lowest bond rating of any county in the state during Gulotta's tenure. This past April, Standard & Poor's took Nassau County off of their credit watch.

"I was incredibly pleased with the response to our RFP. We had a difficult decision to make, but I am satisfied and impressed by the experience, scope and creative approach to managing real estate that Insignia will bring to Nassau County," said Suozzi.

The chairman of Insignia, Stephen Siegel, said that he is eager to begin working during what he termed "a challenging period of restructuring" for the county. "The team we've assembled is collectively one of the most experienced and hard-charging groups that you will find in the real estate industry," said Siegel.

Insignia has also done work for government and non-profit agencies in Long Island such as Catholic Charities, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.