May 31, 2020 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
Month xx–xx, 2019
LOCAL
CLASSIFIEDS
PAGE 7
Brooklyn gives back!
Cobble Hill teachers connect struggling restaurants
with hungry hospital workers with help from kids!
BY AIDAN GRAHAM
Two kind-hearted Cobble Hill
teachers have raised over $18,000
for a philanthropic effort to feed
front line workers with meals
from local restaurants struggling
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were sharing our frustrations
about not being able to do
anything in this diffi cult time,
and we started brainstorming
about ways that we could help,”
said Michele Levin. “We found
that one thing we could do would
be to connect people who wanted
to provide meals, and restaurants
that wanted to make them, with
hospitals that were still in need
for food for their staff.”
Levin, along with her Saint
Ann’s School colleague Stephanie
Schragger, launched “Brooklyn
Cares” in early May — using donations
to order meals from local
eateries and deliver them to the
hungry staff at medical facilities.
“We set our goal at $5,000, but
we kept moving it up because
people just kept donating,” Levin
said.
Since they began, the duo —
who advertise their progress on
their Instagram page @Brooklyn-
Cares — has collected over 100 individual
donations, and delivered
more than 1,000 meals from seven
different restaurants.
“It’s really been a collaborative
community effort,” said Levin.
On the fl ip side, the ability to
help restaurants that have been
forced to shutter dine-in options
and pivot completely to take-out
and delivery has been a heartwarming
charitable exercise.
The duo, who adorn the freshly
cooked meals with the “Brooklyn
Cares” rainbow logo designed by
Levin’s fi ve-year-old daughter
Amelie, often makes the deliveries
themselves — which is no small
feat for the full-time teachers.
But despite the added work
hours, however, the pair says the
effort has been worth the trouble.
“It’s been really special,” said
Levin.
Donate to “Brooklyn Cares” at
www.gofundme.com/f/brooklyncares
Building
bridges
City approves
plaza beneath
Brooklyn Bridge
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
The Landmarks Preservation
Commission approved an $8 million
project to install a new pedestrian
plaza beneath Brooklyn
Bridge Park — offi cially greenlighting
the sweeping proposal to
overhaul the currently fenced-off
lot at Water Street into a two-acre
civic space with a reshaped Fulton
Ferry Lawn and new paving.
Brooklyn Bridge Park, the
semi-private corporation overseeing
Brooklyn’s front yard, will
break ground in late fall and wrap
up construction in December 2021,
according to its president Eric
Landau, who envisioned the new
pedestrian plaza as a long-overdue
connector between Dumbo with
the rest of the waterfront park
south of the bridge.
Most of the hard surface will
be asphalt, but architects also designed
a stretch of so-called concrete
unit pavers directly beneath
the bridge patterned in different
shades of grey to mirror the overpass
above, according to Landau.
Three sloped planting beds
and security bollards along Water
Street will protect the bridge’s
abutment, hindering someone
from driving off the road and
slamming their vehicle into the
183-year-old structure.
The Department of Transportation
also has its own security bollards
directly around the abutment
of the bridge that the agency oversees,
and some of the poles near
Water Street will be removable so
that parks maintenance and city
transportation workers still have
access to the area.
Michele Levin and her children show off the “Brooklyn Cares” logo, painted by fi ve-year-old Amelie. Brooklyn Cares
Vol. 9 No. 22 UPDATED EVERY DAY AT BROOKLYNPAPER.COM
/brooklyn-caresBuilding
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