Property Battle Leads Gloria's In Crown Heights To Close: Report

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Beloved Caribbean restaurant Gloria's has closed after a bizarre years-long legal battle over the storefront it called home for nearly two decades, Gothamist reports.

In what first appeared to be another coronavirus casualty, Gloria's closed up shop at 764 Nostrand Ave. last week. The restaurant was the third and most popular iteration of a Trinidadian eatery started by Gloria Wilson in 1974, who then passed the restaurant to her daughter before she died in 2004.

In reality, the closure came not because of the coronavirus pandemic, but because of a February court ruling that found Gloria's daughter, Nicole Cumberbatch, had "unlawfully occupied" the building since purchasing it in 2001.

Cumberbatch was ordered to pay $50 million in damages and to vacate the premises, leading the family with no choice but to close up shop at the Nostrand Avenue and Sterling Place corner, family told Gothamist.

The order was the end of a years-long legal battle after a 2001 deed theft scheme by the man who sold Cumberbatch the building.

The man, Ted Singer, who has since died, was hired by the building's legal owner Marty Riskin to manage the property, among others, in the 1990s. Singer then tried to sell the property in secret, eventually duping a foreclosure referee and recording Cumberbatch as the owner in 2001, according to Gothamist's report.

Bryan “BJ” Cumberbatch Jr. told Gothamist that the family is planning a return for Gloria's in a new form, though he worried about Riskin's attorney's threat to seize all of the family’s assets.

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