Perry Avenue Family Medical Center (PAFM) will hold a grand opening for its new Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department on Thursday, Oct. 18.

The New York State Small Business Center will be holding a free workshop called “Creating a Winning Business Plan & Developing Marketing Strategies for Your Small Business.”

Check out all the interesting things going on in the northwest Bronx in our Out & About section.

The Bronx Assembly delegation that overwhelmingly supported the city’s plans to build a water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park is now calling on state and city officials to investigate and hold hearings on the project’s escalating cost overruns and other problems, the Norwood News has learned. Eight of the borough’s 11 representatives to the State Assembly signed a letter to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn asking each to call hearings on the project’s cost overruns, which now total at least $1.5 billion.

Members of the Bronx Assembly delegation which voted in lockstep-save the two feet of Jeffrey Dinowitz-to allow the city to blast a massive hole in Van Cortlandt Park for a water filtration plant, are starting to have second thoughts about the project they championed as a boon for the borough’s park system and its workers.

For better or worse, things are changing. A widely-publicized "building boom" is taking place throughout the Bronx, and residents on Grand Avenue are feeling it more acutely than others, with four sites currently under construction between East 190th and 192nd streets.

The COVE, a youth center in the troubled Knox-Gates section of the northwest Bronx, is recovering from a summer of turmoil that included a tough management transition and a string of violent incidents. Three weeks ago, a young man who had visited the COVE on occasion, was shot in the back across the street from the youth center.

New York City Comptroller William Thompson issued a report last week finding that, from 1990 to 2005, disparities in hospitalization and mortality rates based on income have widened among New York City boroughs for heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (81st District) participated in rallies protesting appearances by Iranian President Ahmadinejad at the United Nations and Columbia University.