NEW YORK — An influential Manhattan politician stood in front of a ragged building where a proposed mosque and cultural center would be built near ground zero on Tuesday and underscored his endorsement of the project, which has angered some tea party activists and some Sept. 11 victims’ families. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who has been the target...
Traffic passes a building in lower Manhattan that once housed a Burlington Coat Factory store. A 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center is planned to replace the building that was damaged by airplane debris on Sept. 11, 2001. Now officials say the mosque will need the approval of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. A decades-old proposal to designate the building that would be torn down to make room for the planned mosque as historic must be put to a vote, an official says. Separately, a community board vote is planned tonight on whether to support the plan for a mosque and Islamic cultural center.
NEW YORK — An influential Manhattan politician stood in front of a ragged building where a proposed mosque and cultural center would be built near ground zero on Tuesday and underscored his endorsement of the project, which has angered some tea party activists and some Sept. 11 victims’ families.
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who has been the target of disparaging remarks by Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams for supporting the plans, defended his position and denounced offensive speech directed at him or at Muslims. “What I want people to do is to take a look at the totality of what they are proposing,” Stringer said. “What we’re rejecting here is outright bigotry and hatred.”
Stringer made his remarks while standing outside the Park Place building, a former department store that was damaged by debris in the Sept. 11 attacks. The paint on the building’s facade is peeling, and dirt is accumulating on its columns. Blocks away, cranes extended over the vast World Trade Center construction site. Stringer called the inclusion of a mosque in the groups’ plans “a good thing.”
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said there were no security concerns about building a mosque in the area.
A community board was expected to vote Tuesday night on whether to support the plans. The vote, while not necessary for the building’s owners to move forward with the project, is seen as key to obtaining residents’ support for the project.
The organizations sponsoring the project say they’re trying to meet a growing need for prayer space in Lower Manhattan, as well as provide a venue for the dissemination of mainstream Islam, to counter extremism. But the plan, which would include areas for interfaith activities and conferences and an arts center, has attracted political and social opposition.
Tea party activist Williams has called the proposed center a monument to the 9/11 attacks. And some Sept. 11 victims’ families who say they’re angry it would be built so close to where their relatives died.
Stringer said he understood the sensitivities of the families of 9/11 victims. “I don’t think anybody wants to do anything to disrespect those families. They made the ultimate sacrifice,” he said. “At the same time, we have to balance diversity and look for opportunities to bring different groups together.”
The American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, the organizations sponsoring the project, have said that they bought the building in 2009 and planned to break ground later this year. It could take up to three years to build the Cordoba House. A Friday prayer service has been held at the building since September 2009.
Besides the political and social sensitivity surrounding the project, city officials say the plan also could be hindered by a decades-old proposal to give landmark status to a building that would be replaced by the mosque and center.
City officials say the current building, constructed between 1857 and 1858 in the Italian Renaissance palazzo style, is historically and architecturally significant.