Marty Helps With the Banquet

By COLlive reporter

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has been involved in efforts to keep the lavish gala banquet of Chabad-Lubavitch Shluchim and their supporters close to home, COLlive.com has learned.

A proud Brooklyn enthusiast, Markowitz and his staff helped search for a local venue to hold the vast crowd saluting the educational and humanitarian activities of the Chabad movement.

Some 4000 people annually partake in the International Kinus Hashluchim convention’s closing event which is said to be the largest sit-down full-course dinner in the New York area.

Past banquets were held in various venues that needed a full make-over such as the Brooklyn Armory and Pier 94 in Manhattan and as far as the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset, NJ.

A spokesman for Mr. Markowitz, Mark Zustovich, confirmed that Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Chairman of the Kinus, has recently met with the Borough President.

“It was to discuss possible venues for their large annual convention,” Zustovich told COLlive.com.

The meeting at Borough Hall which took place mid-summer was also attended by the Borough President’s Office Land Use Director Richard Bearak and Avi Gegal, a Markowitz liaison.

“They were trying to find a solution not to take the banquet out of Brooklyn,” a Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch official, which organizes the kinus, told COLlive.com.

“We’re outgrowing any other space, but Baruch Hashem a location has been found in Brooklyn and will be announced soon,” he added.