Friday Brooklyn News Roundup

Friday Brooklyn News Roundup
Tuesday, May 11, 2021. Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

It’s been a long and eventful week in Brooklyn. As you enjoy the warm and sunny weather, catch up on the week’s stories below:

  • This is Streets Week, so City Hall has been rolling out news, including plans for new bus lanes, busways, and bikeways around Brooklyn.
  • The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a hotly-contested proposal to build a residential development next to the Hebron Seventh Day Adventist School in Crown Heights on Tuesday, prompting opponents to start fundraising for a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the project.
  • A massive blaze broke out Thursday morning on the roof of a plant that supplies power the Warbasse Houses complex in southern Brooklyn.
  • Shaun Donovan and Raymond J. McGuire, two candidates for mayor, were *very* off when asked to estimate the median home price in Brooklyn.
  • East Flatbush elected officials joined family members on Friday to mourn a 12-year-old boy who died after being assaulted at his school and demand answers from the city’s Department of Education, which they said has shown a “lack of transparency, accountability and communication” since the tragedy occured.
  • Meet all the candidates running for judicial seats in Brooklyn this year.
  • Tenants of one of the city’s “worst landlords” are demanding a meeting with the property owner after years of unsafe conditions in their Crown Heights building.
  • Dozens of riders were forced to evacuate a city ferry Thursday, after the boat crashed into a docked barge at Brooklyn Bridge Park.
  • Senator Kevin Parker has been flooding some constituents’ mailboxes with mailers, thanks to a discrepancy between city and state election law.
  • A Homecrest mosque was vandalized with the words “Death 2 Palestine” early Thursday morning, during the Eid-al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.
  • A Brooklyn landlord who tried to save on heating bills by giving his tenants electric hot plates and space heaters was charged with manslaughter after one of the heaters caused a deadly fire.
  • This week in restaurant openings and closings: a new birria truck, several new pizzerias, and a new Brooklyn home for a Manhattan favorite—along a farewell to two Park Slope spots.