After doubling in size and running out of space at its Flushing headquarters, GreenPoint Financial Corp. said it will split its administrative and management operations between Manhattan and Long Island.
Richard Humphrey, director of marketing for the company's main unit, GreenPoint Savings Bank, said the $14.5 billion-asset thrift plans this fall to move 600 mostly back-office jobs to a leased office complex in Lake Success, just beyond the New York City border in Nassau County.
The thrift's administrative headquarters and about 100 staff members will also move, to a new location on Park Avenue in Manhattan. GreenPoint plans to sell its Flushing office building, but will lease back enough space to keep its branch office open there.
The savings bank has also applied to the Nassau County Industrial Development Authority to issue a $70 million bond for capital investments at its new offices.
A. Terry Anderson, executive director of the development authority, said terms of the bond issue will be finalized before the end of May. Ms. Anderson said that GreenPoint would also benefit from a number of tax abatements intended to encourage investment in the county, but that these would phase out after 10 years.
An official at New York City's Department of Finance who declined to be identified said that the bank's departure from Queens would have a negative impact on commercial enterprises in Flushing that would no longer be used by GreenPoint's staff.
GreenPoint earned $27.4 million during the first quarter this year, up 41% from the previous quarter but down 4.1% from the same period a year earlier, after a steep increase in interest-related and other expenses.
Thomas S. Johnson, GreenPoint's chairman and chief executive, said results would continue to build "momentum through the year."
The savings bank last year purchased 60 branch offices and $8.3 billion in deposits in New York City and its suburbs from H.F. Ahmanson's Home Savings of America unit. The bank recently sold off two branches in New York's Rockland County as part of a policy of concentrating its activities on consumer banking in New York City and adjacent suburbs.
GreenPoint has $12.7 billion in total deposits.
