Some of Long Island’s most notable facelifts are not the work of plastic surgeons, but skilled builders.

Landlords across the land are spending millions on pricey exteriors, shedding their properties’ older looks for some new coats in the hunt for higher rents. And according to insiders, the skin-deep approach is working.

The owners of 100 Ring Road West, a roughly 40-year-old building in Garden City, recently installed a new aluminum panel façade designed by Mojo Stumer & Associates. As part of a conversion from industrial to office, T. Weiss Realty replaced on old exterior with a Drivit façade at 105 Maxess Road in Melville. And Sbarro’s new headquarters, also in Melville, was built onto old steel.

Long Island is speckled with reborn buildings – not surprising, according to Executive Managing Director Brian Lee of Newark Knight Frank in Melville, since the majority of LI’s commercial buildings date back to the 1970s.

“Now they’re 25 to 30 years old,” Lee said. “Now [landlords] all want to upgrade the building to have that perceived advantage.”

Billie Stein, co-owner of 100 Ring Road West, said “reskinning,” along with other renovations, can create a Class A look without building from scratch – and while a building, interior-wise, might not offer every Class A amenity, a sleeker look can command a steeper price.

Wise investments

Reskins aren’t cheap, and often accompany other work. Stein and fellow owners spent about $1.5 million to revamp their Garden City property, including an upgrade of interior mechanical systems, and Wilbur Breslin, chief executive of Breslin Realty Development Corp., spent about $1 million reskinning 500 Old Country Road in Garden City – more than the facility cost to build in the mid-1960s.

Joseph Baglio, executive vice president of Woodbury-based CLK Houlihan Parnes, said his firm – which acquired the 2.1 million-square-foot Tilles portfolio in March 2005 and other Island buildings since then – has embarked on a farreaching real estate revamp, hoping more Class A looks will move it the head of the commercial real estate class. Taking lesser properties and giving them a Class A look, Baglio said, “was the approach and the thought from the beginning.”

CLK Houlihan Parnes has already reskinned 220 Crossways Park Drive West in Woodbury, replacing a worn wood façade with metal and stucco panels. “It certainly makes it look newer,” Baglio noted.

Part of the push can be traced to New York City, where high rents are pushing clients east, creating a rush on classy space. Part is a simple fact of real estate life: Sometimes, old buildings just look their age.

“The property needed some refurbishment … to remain competitive in this marketplace, which has become a very desirable office market,” Stein said of Ring Road. “At some point, you reach the end of a useful life of a building’s appearance. That’s happening to a lot of buildings at the same time.”