The state Health Department has approved Mount Sinai Hospital’s expansion project in Long Island City.

Plans for the $115 million construction of a new five-story annex include a primary care clinic, an expanded emergency department with 36 treatment wards, eight observation beds and 10 operating rooms. The addition of primary care allows the 235-bed LIC hospital on 30th Avenue to become a more one-stop shop, according to the executive summary.

An Ozone Park teenager was arrested after a high-speed crash last Friday afternoon in Broad Channel that left 10 people injured and shut down a busy stretch of Cross Bay Boulevard at rush hour.

The ornate marble building on Beach Channel Drive, just east of the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge, looks like a ruin you’d find in some ancient city in Europe. But in reality, it’s representative of a more recent era.

The Greek-revival structure at 90-01 Beach Channel Drive once was a courthouse until Queens unified its court system in the 1970s.

(NAPSI)—Some American heroes can finally get the recognition they deserve.

Politics dominated much of the news in South Queens in 2012. With local and national elections looming, the communities were the epicenter of a hard-fought state legislative race with statewide implications.

But much like T.S. Eliot’s explanation of the apocalypse in “The Hollow Men,” the campaign ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, shoved from the top of people’s minds by the most devastating natural disaster to strike South Queens in a lifetime.

Queens politics in 2012 brought new districts, a historic election in the 6th Congressional District and enough cloak-and-dagger intrigue to fill a Robert Ludlum novel.

But when Hurricane Sandy struck in October, killing 12 people in Queens and more than 40 in the city, devastating the Rockaways, Howard Beach, lower Manhattan and Staten Island, the people of central Queens, who were largely spared the storm’s wrath, rallied to the cause of those worst hit.

Selvena Brooks, a resident of Far Rockaway, has chosen to run for the 31st District City Council seat to replace James Sanders Jr. because of a calling to public service that has been a part of her life since she was a teenager.

“The community needs a strong new voice,” Brooks said in an interview with the Chronicle on Friday. “I hope to be that voice. We definitely could use more female representation in public office. I want to work with everyone to move our community forward.”

Hurricane Sandy claimed another Queens victim this past weekend.

Albert McSwain, 77, died Saturday night at Jamaica Hospital. He succumbed to injuries he sustained 12 days earlier during the hurricane.

Hurricane Sandy may be over, but Southeast Queens is still feeling the effects of the storm that blasted the borough last week, leading to power outages, downed trees, flooding and a gasoline shortage that has left motorists furious and even prompted at least two crimes in the area [see separate story].

“This was a high-magnitude storm,” Assemblyman Bill Scarborough (D-Jamaica) said Tuesday. “Things are getting better but there are still disruptions, with trees down and no power in some places. It’s a really trying time. People feel frustrated.”

Rockaway Boulevard seems to be the dividing line between normalcy and struggle. 

The number of hospitals in Queens may be fewer, but one healthcare network is expanding.

The Addabbo Family Health Center cut the ribbon on its seventh location at 105-24 Rockaway Blvd. in Ozone Park on Oct. 26.

The Health and Human Services committees of Community Boards 4 and 5 met in a special joint session at Borough Hall on Monday night.

The subject was hospitals in a borough where four have closed in the last five years, and where all those remaining face uncertainties of new state and federal regulations, not the least of which is the federal Affordable Care Act, known to many as Obamacare.

The Health and Human Services committees of Community Boards 4 and 5 met in a special joint session at Borough Hall on Monday night.

On a blustery Monday afternoon, Democratic Assembly hopeful Ron Kim and state Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Whitestone), along with members of the 1199SEIU labor union, held a press conference to discuss Queen’s hospital closings.

“We’re here for a very simple reason,” Kim said, in front of Flushing Hospital Medical Center. “We want to make sure that our hospitals stay open.”

Raising her clenched fists to the ceiling, Michele Lebau Carroll focused her glare on state Health Commissioner Nirav Shah as he sat across from hundreds of furious residents at last week’s hearing on the closure of Far Rockaway’s Peninsula Hospital.

“I hope you’re happy —there will be blood on your hands,” Carroll, who worked as a lab technician at Peninsula Hospital, shouted, garnering thunderous applause from many of those at last Thursday’s meeting at the Knights of Columbus in Rockaway Beach.

South Queens residents are expected to pack an overdue state Department of Health hearing on the impact of closing Peninsula Hospital today, May 10, when community leaders and legislators say they hope to convince the DOH that there is a “healthcare emergency” in the Rockaways and another medical facility is desperately needed.

“Make no mistake, this is a health crisis and death sentence to the people of the Rockaways and surrounding communities, as the impacts ripple across the borough,” said Brett Scudder, a community activist.

City Councilman James Sanders Jr. (D-Laurelton) announced the reopening and renovation of Rapid MD’s immediate medical care facility on Merrick Boulevard in Laurelton.

Sanders, along with the Rapid MD medical team and community health activists, held a press conference on Wednesday to show the state-of-the-art facility to the public.

A Jamaica group wants to purchase the recently closed Peninsula Hospital in Far Rockaway, revamp the facility and integrate it into a larger healthcare provider system.

If granted approval, Community Wellness Centers of America plans to work closely with the state Department of Health to reopen the hospital. Their new strategy would focus on clinical treatment of chronic illnesses and diseases, preventive screenings and educational programs.

Peninsula Hospital in Far Rockaway officially closed Monday, leaving residents reeling and elected officials scrambling to reopen the 104-year-old institution that had employed more than 1,000 people.

The closure of the 173-bed facility leaves one hospital in the Rockaways, St. John’s Episcopal.