Officials expect the deal to close on or before Aug. 31. The sale includes the purchase of 42 buildings consisting of art studios, resident halls as well as classroom and library buildings.

The deal is part of Stony Brook's expansion plan. Last year, using the process of eminent domain, the school acquired 246 acres adjacent to the university where it plans to develop the Stony Brook University Research and Development Campus. The first building to be completed would be the approximately 123,000-sf Center for Excellence in Wireless Information Technology, which would be finished in 2007. The master plan calls for nine additional research and development buildings that would be constructed over a 10-year period. The total for the project site would be approximately 830,000 sf. Stony Brook, one of the region's largest employers, anticipates that as many as 1,900 researchers and employees will work at the Research and Development Campus within 10 years.

The campus here will offer primarily undergraduate, upper-division courses that will be shaped in an interdisciplinary fashion addressing issues regarding the environment and ecological sustainability. In February 2005, the marine science undergraduate program at Southampton College was transferred to Stony Brook's Marine Sciences Research Center, which already offered a graduate program. The three-year agreement that allowed Stony Brook to lease the marine sciences facilities at the campus will be subsumed into the purchase, once title transfers.