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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2020 10 pages • Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint Vol. 43, No. 12 • March 20–26, 2020
BROOKLYN HUNKERS DOWN
Businesses shut down as local hospitals prepare for unprecedented pandemic
Closed, indefi nitely
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Brooklyn business owners and
staff prepared for the worst ahead
of the Mayoral executive order to
shut down or reduce operations
of most establishments in order
to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Now that it’s in place,
some workers are fearing deep
cuts to their livelihoods.
“We have a lot of people here
that this is what they depend for
most of their income and I’m one
of them,” said Ellen O’Shea, a 10-
year bartender at Freddy’s Bar on
Fifth Avenue. “I’ll have to file for
unemployment and start buying
some Ramen I guess — it definitely
hit for real real today.”
Many workers like O’Shea face
uncertain times now that Mayor
Bill de Blasio signed the March
16 executive order, which limits
restaurants, bars, and cafés
to take out and delivery, while
completely shuttering nightclubs,
movie theaters, theater houses,
and concert venues. The executive
order, meant to curtail the
outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
went into effect at 9 am
on March 17.
But the state government got
ahead of de Blasio when Governor
Andrew Cuomo announced that
the Empire State — along with
New Jersey and Connecticut —
would introduce the same limits
to bars and restaurants, but begin
Barclays Center to
compensate workers
during NBA shutdown
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
As doctors prepare to treat
a coming wave of coronavirus
patients, the Brooklyn Hospital
Center in Fort Greene will begin
pre-screening potentially infected
patients with basic thermometers
and other tools at a new outdoor
facility — which will reduce the
hospitalized population and ease
the load on the healthcare system,
said Borough President Eric Adams.
“As the spread of coronavirus
places an enormous strain on
our health care system, we must
find innovative ways to allocate
resources and flatten the curve,”
said Adams in a statement. “The
By Robert Pozarycki
for Brooklyn Paper
An elderly woman has died from
coronavirus in Brooklyn, becoming
the first fatality from the novel
infection in New York City.
“The patient, an elderly woman
with advanced emphysema, was
admitted to the hospital last week
as one of our first cases, and had
been in critical condition ever
since,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio
in a statement. “We’ve known
from the outset that these people
are the most at risk in this pandemic,
and today’s news is a sad
confirmation of that reality.”
The 82-year-old woman, who
died late on March 13 at Wyckoff
Medical Center in Bushwick, had
been suffering emphysema — a
lung disease typically associated
with smoking.
Governor Andrew Cuomo reiterated
that senior citizens with
underlying health issues are at the
highest risk of suffering serious
or fatal complications from coronavirus
— just as they are with
the common flu.
“If you were to ask the Health
Department how many people in
their 80s who had an underlying
respiratory illness and contracted
flu who passed, my guess is that
would be in the dozens,” Cuomo
Photo by Kevin Duggan
said at a media conference call.
“It’s normally not just the flu that
kills you … This virus is basically
pneumonia.”
The number of confirmed cases
continues to grow in the five boroughs,
with 1,871 infections reported
as of March 18.
New York State now leads the
nation with the most cases, as the
number surpasses 2,382, according
to the governor.
Photo by Paulo Basseto
Cuomo said that he expects
the number of infected patients
to climb considerably as autotesting
kicks into high gear in
the week ahead.
“We believe there are thousands
of people who have coronavirus,
maybe tens of thousands who
have it,” the governor observed.
“Maybe, there were tens of thousands
who had it and never realized
it, and resolved from it.”
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
With over 1,000 New Yorkers
currently infected, the spread of
the novel coronavirus threatens
to overwhelm medical facilities
statewide with a swell of patients,
leaving hospitals overextended and
grasping for resources.
At a press conference on March
17, Governor Andrew Cuomo estimated
that the virus will hit its
peak in roughly 45 days, on May
1, at which time 37,200 intensive
care unit beds will be needed.
Yet the state currently has only
3,000.
To make up for the massive deficit,
large spaces will need to be set
aside for hospital beds. In Brooklyn,
local elected officials have
started to scope out a few possible
sites.
In a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio
and Governor Cuomo, Borough
President Eric Adams identified
multiple publicly-owned sites that
could provide the space needed to fit
thousands of additional beds.
“Covid—19 cases are growing
at an exponential rate and Brooklyn
hospitals could reach capacity in a
very short period of time,” Adams
wrote. “It is imperative that we act
now to secure and prepare available
spaces before that becomes
our new reality.”
The sites include:
• The out-of-use Brooklyn Detention
Center on Atlantic Avenue.
The jail contains 759 cells,
a kitchen and common areas that
could facilitate emergency medical
supplies.
• Public school buildings
which have multiple rooms and
are closed to students until at
least April 20.
• The boroughs many armory
buildings including the 13th Regiment
Armory in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
the Bedford Atlantic Armory
in Crown Heights and the Marcy
Avenue Armory in Williamsburg.
The Bedford Union Armory in
The Brooklyn House of Detention
has been identified
as a potential site to increase
hospital bed capacity.
Brooklyn Hospital unveils coronavirus pre-screening tent
Boro woman is city’s fi rst coronavirus death
Brooklyn pols identify sites to
increase healthcare capacity
Businesses face uncertain future amid virus
Matt Hogan, the owner of Irish Haven, worries about the
impact of the business closures on his livelihood.
re-opening it will be.”
Meanwhile, the owners of
one Williamsburg board game
store said they saw an uptick in
sales during the weekend, due to
Brooklynites stocking up on activities
to keep them busy while
quarantined indoors.
“There was a lot of people this
weekend who knew they were going
to be indoors for the foreseeable
future and looking for things
to do to keep them sane and occupied,”
said Louis Chato, one
of the owners of Twenty-Sided
Store on Grand Street.
Fun outside of the home
came to a standstill, however,
and one Coney Island playwright
feared that mostly-freelancing
artists would struggle to pay
thier bills.
“I think everybody’s priority
is real life, but performers are
generally freelancers or have a
part-time job in the service industry
and people are freaking
out about loosing their gigs,” said
Dick Zigun, who had to call off
a years-in-the-works rock opera
due to the outbreak.
Zigun cancelled the show
he co-wrote about a brain-eating
jukebox and said he and his
fellow artists were scrambling
to figure out how to not have all
their work be for naught.
“It’s devastating because for
an Off-Off-Broadway theater
company, you can’t just pause
a show and bring it back two three
months later,” he said.
Kokotas — the owner of Tom’s
— hoped that the spread of the virus
will be contained soon if people
band together and self-quarantine
as much as possible.
“If everybody’s responsible
and self-quarantines, I think we
can put the worst of this behind
us, it’s gotta be a group effort,”
the restaurateur said.
at 8 pm on March 16.
The owner of a nearby tavern
said that bars not serving food will
be hardest hit, as they were during
the recently-cancelled St. Patrick’s
day festivities, because they
can’t fall back deliveries.
“It’s tough when you sell beer
and spirits,” said Matt Hogan of
Fourth Avenue’s Irish Haven. “The
timing of it couldn’t be worse with
St. Patrick’s Day.”
The pub owner cancelled all of
their events for the Emerald Islethemed
celebrations, which usually
is essential to keeping the business
afloat, according to Hogan.
“We’ve managed to operate on
razor thin margins and we have put
up a safety net against things, but it’s
going to hurt for sure,” he said. “But
we realize the social responsibility
for not spreading the virus.”
In Prospect Heights, the owner
of the local staple diner Tom’s is
gearing up to reduce his operations
to a skeleton staff that will dish
up their comfort foods for deliveries
and take out only, at a time
when business usually starts picking
up after a winter lull.
“Spring is when people start getting
some money in their pockets,
it’s when things come a little more
to life for us,” said Jimmy Kokotas,
the third-generation owner of
the restaurant.
The spread of the respiratory
disease also halted the longawaited
reopening of the historic
restaurant Gage and Tollner on
Fulton Street, which was scheduled
for March 15 — although
owners were optimistic the ancient
business would withstand
this crisis, too.
“Gage and Tollner has already
survived two World Wars,
the Great Depression, the Spanish
flu epidemic, and Prohibition
— it will survive this as well,” the
owners said in an emailed statement.
“We will re-open Gage &
Tollner as soon as we feel it’s the responsible
thing to do — and when
we do, what a magnificently grand
Hospital crunch
Crown Heights is also a possibility
if work stops on the long-in-theworks
revamp of the structure.
• The Brooklyn Cruise Ship
Terminal in Red Hook, a massive
structure with wide-open
spaces.
• Floyd Bennett Field/Aviator
Park in Marine Park, a federally
owned former airfield with empty
airplane hangers and vast swaths
of empty land.
In addition to these spaces, Coney
Island Councilman Mark Treyger
announced on Monday that he
has been coordinating with the
Brooklyn Cyclones and the Department
of Emergency Management
to repurpose the parking lot
of Coney Island’s MCU Park to increase
hospital capacity.
The parking lot had previously
been repurposed during superstorm
Sandy as a camp for volunteers to
distribute supplies to storm-stricken
Coney Islanders.
On March 16, Mayor de Blasio
outlined the city’s intentions
to increase hospital capacity, describing
the situation as a war-like
scenario. “We’re going to have to
radically expand our health care facilities
in New York City and capacity,”
he said.
Photo by Zoe Freilich
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
The Barclays Center announced
on March 14 that employees
of the 19,000-seat stadium
will receive compensation
while the NBA and most events
remains on hiatus due to the
spread of the coronavirus.
Stadium officials announced
in a joint statement with the
Brooklyn Nets that hourly
employees will be paid for the
shifts they would have worked
had the season continued as
scheduled.
“It is our goal to alleviate
the hit to household cash flow
from work stoppage for people
impacted so they can pay
for necessary expenses such as
rent, food, utilities, and daily
necessities,” stadium officials
said in a statement. “We want to
let our stadium staff know that
nobody is left behind and we
are all in this together.”
32BJ, the property services
union that represents many Barclays
Center employees, thanked
the stadium for a move that it
said would keep workers safe
during the pandemic.
“Thank you Barclays Center
for standing with vulnerable
workers who keep events at
the center running and safe,”
the union tweeted.
Sources within 32BJ, who requested
anonymity to discuss
ongoing negotiations said however
that the deal is not finalized
and union reps are still working
out details of the plan.
Brooklyn Hospital Center’s new
pre-screening tent will alleviate
the burden on their emergency
room, and allow those with the
greatest level of need to receive
the proper care.”
The make-shift facility will
operate in front of the hospital’s
Ashland Place emergency room,
where Brooklynites exhibiting
symptoms can receive a quick
examination — and those showing
severe symptoms, such as trouble
breathing, will be diverted to
the emergency room.
Patients will also be asked about
their medical histories, and doctors
may send those with preexisting
conditions to the emergency
room, even if they show
mild or no symptoms, according
to officials.
Patients who visit the new facility
will be billed as they would
for any other hospital screening,
officials said at a press conference
announcing the new location.
The move comes as medical facilities
around the city are dealing
with a surge in hospital visits related
to the coronavirus — including
the Brooklyn Hospital Center,
which has already treated three
people with the infection.
As of March 16, the novel virus
has a 19 percent hospitalization
rate in the United States according
to the Borough President’s
office.
Governor Andrew Cuomo in a
letter published on March 15 in the
New York Times pleaded with President
Donald Trump for federal assistance,
saying the state was currently
unable to “slow the spread of
the disease to a rate that our state
health care systems can handle.”
The Fort Greene hospital’s president,
however, said the facility’s
staff were working tirelessly to
combat the virus’s spread.
“We are working around the
clock, and our excellent doctors,
nurses, and other providers are
diligently keeping up to date with
best-practice guidelines, and coming
up with solutions, such as this
tent for pre-screening,” said Gary
Terrinoni. “Together we will get
through this.”
The make-shift outdoor facility at the Brooklyn Hospital Center will be used to pre-screen
potentially infected patients.
MORE ON THE CORONAVIRUS
Small business advocates demand taxrelief,
deregulation amid crisis
‘Brooklyn Mom’ keeping parents
connected during coronavirus closures
Brooklyn DA halts low-level prosecutions
INSIDE ON PAGE 7
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