This Week In Brooklyn: Hotel Files For Bankruptcy, Post Office Named After Mother Cabrini & More

Happy Wednesday! We at Bklyner hope you are all safe and well. Let’s begin with indicators. The daily number of people admitted to NYC hospitals for suspected COVID-19 – today’s report, 224 patients. Hospitalization rate per 100,000 people – 3.19 people per 100,000. “That is not good. We want to be under two. That is too high,” Mayor de Blasio said this morning.  The daily new cases of COVID-19 – seven-day average- 2,789.

• Brooklyn community boards are pushing back against budget cuts, we reported. On Friday afternoon, the city’s Office of Management and Budget convened an emergency virtual meeting with the city’s community boards. The meeting was called with 30 minutes notice, and only District Managers — the paid staffers who oversee their board’s day-to-day operations — were invited. Board Chairs, Finance Committee members, and City Council Members were not.
• The Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn College Subway Station will be dedicating a mural to Garrett Goble, a motorman who died during an arson fire a few months ago.
• We know how much you enjoy our opening and closings list, so here’s another one just before the holidays. Let us know if we missed any!
• NY Sun Works, a non-profit organization has been making it easier to bring the classroom home during the Pandemic forced blended/remote learning by providing thousands of at-home hydroponic kits to NYC public school students, we wrote.
• A 77-year-old pedestrian is dead after she was struck by a driver as she was crossing the street in Bushwick.
• Six people are injured after a fire truck crashed into a car and then a storefront on Sunday. A fire truck was responding to a fire on Bay Parkway near Bath Avenue, when it crashed into a Mercedes before crashing into the Coquette Kids shop on Avenue U and East 4th Street.
• Phoenix, a new rollercoaster, is coming to Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park in 2021! How are you feeling about this news?
• Linda Boyd, a Fort Greene resident for the past 25 years, spent much of her time during the COVID-19 pandemic volunteering to talk to strangers, making their days just a bit less lonely. Boyd’s compassion didn’t go unnoticed, as she is now the winner of AARP’s most prestigious volunteer award for community service.
• “Community Board 2’s District Manager Robert Perris plans to resign from his position on Dec. 26, saying he wants to focus on his family after 17 years at the helm of the Downtown Brooklyn civic panel,” the Brooklyn Paper reported.
• Here are 19 restaurants that provide heated and cozy outdoor dining in Brooklyn, Eater reported.
• “A Brooklyn man faces up to 20 years in prison after being accused of fraudulently securing $1.9 million in forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, using a portion of the funds to buy the most recent Bentley and Escalade vehicle,” Gothamist wrote.
• “The owners of a hotel and residential tower project in Brooklyn’s hip Williamsburg neighborhood have filed for bankruptcy, the latest blow to New York’s struggling hospitality and commercial real estate sectors,” Bloomberg reported.
• The NBA season has begun. And star-player Kevin Durant is now playing for the Brooklyn Nets. “After So Much Losing And Misery, Brooklyn Nets’ Fans Can Dream Big,” Forbes wrote.
• “Environmentalist groups say the [North Brooklyn] pipeline, intended to funnel gas from Pennsylvania to north Brooklyn, is an example of environmental racism,” the Guardian reported.
• “Outgoing Bed-Stuy Assemblymember Tremaine Wright has been elected Brooklyn Democratic Party county committee chair in a meeting of the party’s executive committee Tuesday,” BK Reader wrote.
• “The Dyker Heights Post Office will now bear the name of Saint Frances Cabrini after President Donald Trump signed the name change into law on Dec. 3,” the Brooklyn Paper reported. “The Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini Post Office Building, on 13th Avenue and 84th Street, will receive a plaque with its new name in the spring.”