By Alan J. Wax
STAFF WRITER

The Albanese Development Corp.’s two Garden City buildings were built almost two decades ago. Today, in one sense, they are among the most modern in the region. The buildings, 1010 and 1050 Franklin Ave., which together are marketed as Garden City Center, are among the first "Internet ready" commercial buildings on Long Island.

The decision to plug their buildings into the Internet was made a year ago, said Russell Albanese, executive vice president. The reason: to make their buildings, one 50,000 square feet, the other 60,000, more useful to current tenants and to attract new ones. He said most tenants rely on personal computer modems to get onto the Internet now.

In essence, Albanese is offering tenants another utility. The others are electricity; heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and plumbing and water. Other buildings on the Island have been wired with fiber optic cables by telecommunications providers such as Lightpath Inc., which is owned by Woodbury-based Cablevision Systems Inc. But major developers such as Reckson Associates Realty Corp. and Blumenfeld Development Group Ltd. said none of their properties are Internet ready. "What a great idea," said Jonathan Cohen, director of marketing at Blumenfeld.

Larry Bugden, general manager of Lightpath, said the company has about 250 commercial buildings on Long Island that are wired and into which it can install T1 lines, which provide dedicated, high-speed access to the Internet. Lightpath plans to offer Internet service in some of these by itself or with other providers, he added.

During the summer, Lightpath equipped the buildings with fiber-optic lines. The lines also provides tenants with an alternative to Bell Atlantic's local telephone service, and with the T1 lines. The developer then invited Infrastructure Design, Inc., with whom it has had a long relationship, to provide access to the Internet and electronic mail capabilities for the tenants of the buildings.

Internet equipment owned by Media Jelly, located in the corner of a basement storeroom in one of the buildings, eliminates the need for tenants to have their own modems. Tenants can use the Garden City Center domain name - a corporate identification on the World Wide Web - or register their own domain and use the building's Internet server.

Garden City Center makes no profit from it, Russell Albanese said. There are monthly access fees, depending on the number of users, and additional fees to host a Web site. A tenant with five users pays about $495.00 a month for unlimited high-speed access.

"We consider all the tenants to be one large company," said Infrastructure’s director of Internet technology, Christopher LoPresti, noting that the individual computers of the various tenants are not only blocked from each other, but from potential hackers on the Internet.

The system has been up and running since Sept. 3, 1997. Blackford Securities, an investment firm that moved into 9,000 square feet at 1010 Franklin Ave. in April, was the first tenant to go online. "We signed on for five user IDs," said Blackford facilities manager Richard Prime. "It's an absolute business necessity." Prime said he was told by a consultant for the investment firm that the service offered through the landlord "was price competitive."