SOUTHFIELD - It's a gem many might overlook in a bustling city packed with residences and office buildings. The Park West Gallery - well-known for running art auctions on cruise lines - is a 63,000- square-foot find in the city of Southfield.

The gallery was started in 1969 in a 20-by-60-foot storefront at Nine Mile and Telegraph by Albert Scaglione, a former rocket science professor at Wayne State University and researcher who got out of the space business when the government cut funding for NASA.

"For me, it's like home is where the heart is," he said, explaining why he chose to open his facility in Southfield.

Although he's originally from New Jersey, he and his wife bought a home near Southfield and loved the area. When his research project trying to get a man on Mars was not renewed, and the only work left was on nuclear warheads, he got out and decided to get into art like some of his relatives in Italy.

"I could get artists … that wanted to work with me," he said. "I started running auctions on Sunday afternoons. By '73, I went all the way to Japan."

He outgrew the original gallery in three years and in 1972 moved to a bigger facility on Telegraph before building his own space, on the three and a half acres where the gallery is now located on Northwestern Highway, in 1980.

Scaglione said he expanded to art auctions on cruise lines - Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Celebrity, Holland America, Regent, Oceana and Disney - in the 1990s after people from the cruise industry requested he work with them. Now, he said, even with his large facility in Southfield, most of his work takes place internationally.

"Our core business is to create art auctions all over the world," he said. "The vast majority of the sales are made through auctions we conduct all over the world."

The gallery owns hundreds of thousands of pieces of art, for sale and in extensive archives. It works with artists all over the world and has pieces from classical artists such as Auguste Renoir and Pablo Picasso to sports memorabilia and Disney, to local artists such as Marcus Glenn from Southfield.

Gallery Director Morris Shapiro said Park West gives visitors an even greater experience than they can get at art museums because they have the opportunity for the art to become part of their lives.

"When you have the opportunity to collect … and you can actually own those works, it's very exciting for people," he said.

He said art galleries are typically thought of as stuffy places, but they work to change that perception.

"We really want people to feel very comfortable," he said. "We're trying to get art into more people's lives."

Scaglione said it's very important to him that buyers make educated choices when selecting something that could become a family heirloom.

"We recruit and train people from all over the world," Scaglione said of his 200-plus sales staff. "We want them to come in here and get thoroughly familiar with all of the art. We want perfection."

Everything at the gallery is for sale, and prices range from a $200 framed work to a $900,000 Renoir.

"We have a lot of works of art (in the) $800 to $3,000 range," Shapiro said. "Art doesn't have to be expensive."

At any one time, works from 60 to 100 artists are on display, and the collection changes once a month. Right now, Park West is featuring the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer and Pablo Picasso.

In addition to the changing exhibits inside, the gallery also displays between 20 and 30 pieces in a lighted exhibit viewable 24 hours a day through the windows in the front of the gallery. Plus, a former retention pond in the rear of the building has been turned into a sparkling pond complete with a fountain, surrounded by a garden-lined walkway that winds its way down the hill behind the gallery with willows blowing in the breeze. The park-like setting also displays sculptures by Grediaga Antonio Kieff and Yaacov Agam, owned by the gallery.

"Our mantra, from early on, was to make art accessible to people," Scaglione said. "Our stuff is not repetitive."

Park West Gallery is located at 29469 Northwestern Highway in Southfield, just north of 12 Mile Road. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, until 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends. For more information, call (800) 521-9654 or log on to www.parkwestgallery.com.

You can reach Staff Writer Kristyne E. Demske at kdemske@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1041.