NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 20, 2026--
Metropolitan Commercial Bank (“MCB” or the “Bank”) (NYSE: MCB) today announced the installation of new exterior signage at 311 Boulevard of the Americas in Lakewood, New Jersey, home of MCB’s Lakewood Banking Center.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260820007198/en/
In 2020, the Bank signed a long-term lease at 311 Boulevard of the Americas with Chopp Holdings LLC and subsequently completed a comprehensive build-out of the space to support its growing business in the market.
“MCB has served the Lakewood community for more than two decades,” said Mark R. DeFazio, Founder, President & CEO of Metropolitan Commercial Bank. “Our new signage reflects the relationships we have built here and our continued commitment to the businesses, organizations and individuals we serve.”
The Lakewood Banking Center provides clients throughout Lakewood and the surrounding area with access to MCB’s commercial banking solutions and personalized, relationship-based service.
“MCB is an important part of the Lakewood business community, and we are proud to have the Bank at 311 Boulevard of the Americas,” said Mark Chopp, Managing Partner of Chopp Holdings. “The new signage gives MCB greater visibility and reflects the Bank’s established presence in the community.”
About Metropolitan Commercial Bank
Metropolitan Commercial Bank (“MCB”) is a New York City–based, full-service commercial bank serving businesses, institutions, and individuals who value expertise, responsiveness, and long-term partnerships. Since 1999, MCB has built enduring client relationships—many spanning generations—by delivering consistent, relationship-driven banking.
The Bank provides a full suite of commercial, business, and personal banking solutions, with deep expertise in sectors including real estate, property management, legal services, healthcare, government, and global investors utilizing EB-5 financial solutions. MCB combines specialized capabilities with a highly personalized approach, offering integrated solutions such as title and escrow services, 1031 exchanges, and merchant acquiring.
MCB has received national recognition for its performance and innovation, including being named one of Newsweek’s Best Regional Banks in 2024 and 2025 and earning industry recognition for its lending performance and specialized commercial banking capabilities.
MCB operates full-service banking centers in Manhattan and Boro Park, Brooklyn, within New York City; Great Neck on Long Island; Lakewood, New Jersey; and in South Florida, including Miami and West Palm Beach.
Metropolitan Commercial Bank is a New York State–chartered commercial bank, a member of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and an equal housing lender. The Bank’s parent company is Metropolitan Bank Holding Corp. (NYSE: MCB).
For more information, please visit the Bank’s website at MCBankNY.com.
Metropolitan Commercial Bank - Lakewood, NJ: New exterior signage reflects the Bank’s longstanding commitment to the Lakewood community.
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon due to communications problems at regional air traffic control centers, an FAA notice said.
The ground stop was being imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” according to the notice.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a communications issue was affecting the regional air traffic control centers that direct planes between airports nationwide. He said FAA technicians are investigating.
This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023 when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication yet that “this was a nefarious attack against us. It’s just a telecommunications outage.”
Here is the latest:
The Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to ground all flights nationwide Friday threw the sports world into chaos, leaving NBA, NHL and college teams stranded as they tried to reach their destinations, and NFL teams were left to wonder whether the issue would be resolved in time for them to travel to their games this weekend.
The FAA issued a notice that said the ground stop was “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
Most college football teams playing Saturday travel the day before their game, and the stoppage left many schools — including No. 2 Utah, eighth-ranked Texas and No. 9 Tennessee — at a standstill as they departed for road games. The Utes play at No. 22 Arizona, the Longhorns visit No. 24 LSU and the Vols are traveling to Texas A&M in three of the bigger games of the weekend.
It also was unclear whether referees, who typically fly to their assignments the day before games, would make it on time.
The communications problems that led to the nationwide halt to flights don’t appear to be linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there’s no indication yet that the problems are linked to the new computer system or any kind of terrorist attack.
The FAA’s SMART system is based in a single location near Washington, D.C., where a team of experts analyzes flight schedules, weather forecasts and hundreds of other streams of data. Then that office sends recommendations to the FAA’s command center that relays them to controllers across the country for consideration.
The company that designed the system, ASI, said “the current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.”
Travelers just passing through security at Chicago O’Hare Airport learned about the ground stop when they gazed up at screens that showed flight delays across the board.
Some called friends or family members, debating whether to stay the night in Chicago or find another way to their destinations.
Amber McQuilkin sat on a bench nearby, disappointed that she might miss a trip with friends to New York for the League of Legends world finals. Her friends, she said, had already arrived there.
“There’s not really any information being passed to me,” said the Seattle software engineer, who took a week of vacation for the trip. “I contemplated just abandoning the flight and driving, but then the more I thought about it, the more I’m like, that would be miserable.”
Austin Curtis and his wife were rethinking their trip from South Bend, Indiana, to a friend’s baby shower in Denver after getting delayed during a layover in Chicago.
They had boarded their flight to Denver from O’Hare International Airport when they were told to get off the plane.
“We did see them taking luggage off our plane and others, so we’re assuming it’s going to be a pretty substantial delay,” Curtis said.
They were unsure whether to get a hotel room or keep waiting out the delay at the airport. With care already in place for their two young children at home, they might stay the weekend in Chicago, he said.
“We might just make the most of it,” Curtis said.
Aviation professor Skip Bailey said the reason they teach them that is so they will be prepared if the radio on their plane malfunctions. He said no one expects air traffic controllers nationwide to lose the ability to communicate.
Pilots are expected to maintain the headings and vectors that controllers gave them before the problem. And then if the outage continues, they revert to following their filed flight plan. Pilots may also be able to communicate with each other over the radio even if they can’t talk to controllers. And airliners have their own radar systems.
“It’s not mass chaos out there. There’s plenty of ways to try to communicate,” said Bailey, who teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s aviation institute. “But not letting anybody take off again obviously is extremely important because we don’t want to put more aircraft into a system that’s already having an issue.”
Jeff Dubner was still waiting to disembark his plane an hour and a half after leaving the gate at Los Angeles International Airport.
His Alaska Airlines flight to Washington, D.C., was already half an hour late and was taxiing to the runway when the plane came to a halt.
Dubner heard about the nationwide ground stop from somebody behind him, he said by phone from the tarmac.
“It’s frustrating. This certainly sounds like it’s going to be more than the usual run of the mill delay. I look forward to finding out why,” said Dubner, a Washington, D.C., attorney.
But passengers were taking things in stride. Even a baby near him had calmed down, Dubner said.
Both airlines said in statements on X that flights already in the air will continue.
United Airlines said while domestic flights will not depart, “international departures are being managed on a case-by-case basis by the FAA.”
American Airlines said it expects disruptions for the rest of the day.
“It will be all hands on deck across American to get customers on their way as soon as possible when the FAA lifts this nationwide ground stop,” the airline said.
A Delta passenger flying from Detroit to Fort Lauderdale recorded video of the captain explaining the ground stop during a midair announcement.
He tells passengers that other planes will be unable to depart, but they are still on track to land at their destination within the hour, according to footage shared with The Associated Press by passenger Andrew Gillfillan.
A photo also taken by Gillfillan shows rows of passengers watching live broadcasts about the ground stop on their seatback televisions.
Sean Carey was waiting for his flight at Chicago O’Hare Airport when his grandparents and other family members called and texted him from Las Vegas to let him know about the ground stop. He was planning to travel there for a family wedding.
“I’m surprised the airport’s not in more disarray,” he said.
If he can’t get on a flight for the wedding Saturday, he only hopes he gets a refund and plans to visit another time.
“I hope everyone gets home safely and gets to where they need to go safely,” he said.
Mullin said communication systems had been affected, triggering the nationwide ground stop, but he provided few other details. He said officials continue to investigate the causes.
They are able to communicate “at certain levels,” he said. “But it’s overwhelmed some of the systems we have.”
Mullin said flights are continuing to land during the stoppage and that, for now, officials are working to “make sure” that “we get the flights down and then we get a normal operations back up.”
Mullin said it’s not yet known what caused the communications outages, but “we’re gonna find out what happened.”
He added that he’s not going to make assumptions and encouraged others to do the same.
Asked if there may be a connection to Thursday’s Microsoft outage, Mullin said officials are not ruling anything out.
Officials are dealing with midair flights on a case by case basis and working to help them land safely, he added.
“There is no indication — and we had no reason to believe that — as of right now, that this was a threat to the United States,” Mullin said.
“This was a telecommunication outage,” Mullin told reporters outside the White House.
He said details were still emerging, but that the president had been briefed.
Mullin said the immediate priority was ensuring that planes still in the air would be landing safely, but that there was no clear information on how long the stoppage might last.
He also downplayed comparisons to the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001, saying, “This isn’t the same comparison to 9/11. That’s a road I won’t go down.”
The federal agency said on social media that there has been a temporary telecommunications outage.
All flights have been accounted for and international flights will be “handled on a case by case basis,” the agency said.
“There was no indication as of yet this was a nefarious attack against us,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin.
All flights in the air are accounted for, he said during a news conference, adding that the public has no reason to be afraid.
The FAA’s ground stop order runs through at least 11 p.m. ET Friday.
Passengers on an American Airlines flight from Wichita to Chicago on Friday afternoon received text messages explaining the problem as “air traffic conditions in Chicago.”
The plane sat on the runway for about an hour before the captain announced the air traffic problem seemed to be nationwide, and the plane would return to the gate.
Passengers deboarded and the airline said no one would be rebooked for at least an hour.
Former United Airlines pilot and aviation expert Steve Arroyo said the problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, except this time on a nationwide scale.
Arroyo said it could be linked to the outdated technology used by air traffic controllers.
“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground,” said Arroyo. “And not put them in the air where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them.”
A key FAA computer system malfunctioned, temporarily grounding all flights nationwide and touched off a cascading air traffic jam.
Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon because of communications problems at regional air traffic control centers.
The FAA notice said the ground stop was being imposed “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said there is a communications issue affecting the 22 regional air traffic control centers that direct planes en route between airports nationwide. He said FAA technicians are investigating.
This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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FILE - A Federal Aviation Administration logo is displayed in the tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, March 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
