Carl Glassman / Tribeca Trib

In July, members of Community Board 1 listen as one of many opponents of the Islamic center speak against the proposed project. The board twice voted in favor of positions held by the center’s developers.

With the controversy over a 13-story Islamic community center and mosque on Park Place monopolizing 24-hour news networks, editorial pages and campaign speeches, it is easy to forget that the “Ground Zero Mosque,” as it is often mislabeled, began as a local issue.

Since May 5, when the project first was introduced to a committee of Community Board 1—winning applause from board members before soon provoking protests far beyond Lower Manhattan—the views of those who live and work closest to the site have been largely overlooked.

And for the most part, those views strike a very different tone from the growing national backlash against the project’s construction.

“How many people do you talk to in this neighborhood who have such extreme views about the mosque?” said Irene Widjaja, a Financial District resident and mother of a second grader at P.S. 234.

Widjaja was on her way to the  Equinox gym on Murray Street late last month, within earshot of the shouts from anti-mosque protesters on West Broadway. “I don’t think there are many,” she added. “And we are the people who lived the experience of 9/11.”

Most local elected officials have defended the project, called Park51. Community Board 1, supposedly a barometer of its Downtown constituents’ opinions, voted overwhelmingly in its favor—twice.

At a July CB1 meeting packed with opponents of the project, State Sen. Daniel Squadron, who represents Lower Manhattan, was pressed by the crowd for his opinion of the proposal, put forth by the Cordoba Initiative. They did not like what they heard.

“Especially in Lower Manhattan, we’re welcoming, we are diverse,” Squadron said to a round of heckling and boos. “There should be no areas that don’t accept religions or cultures anywhere in this country, and certainly not here.”

In interviews with people who live and work within a block of the proposed center, most said they did not object to the plan. If there are concerns, they said, it is not with a Muslim center being located in their neighborhood or near the World Trade Center site.

“I definitely support the mosque,” said Ben Borromeo, a resident at 53 Park Place, which abuts the Park51 site to the west. “My thing is that there’s been so much construction down here, another 13-story building isn’t going to help. It’s a lot to deal with, but I know something’s got to go in there.”

Jake Ray, also of 53 Park Place, fears something far worse. “Ideologically, I’m absolutely behind the idea of building the mosque,” he said. But Ray added that he pictures “some guy in the backwoods of America who’s against this thing, packing a moving van full of fertilizer.”

“Being that I live next door,” Ray said, “I’m a little nervous about what might happen.”

Carl Glassman / Tribeca Trib

A protestor at a rally held last month on West Broadway. A smaller counter-demonstration took place a block away on Church Street.

Vadwatty Prashad, who manages the De Janeiro clothing boutique at the corner of Park Place and Church Street, said she believes the center will be a step forward in the neighborhood’s healing from the spiritual wounds of Sept. 11.

“Prayer is for everybody,” Prashad said. “More prayer for those souls [killed in the attacks] is a good thing, because those souls need a lot of prayer.”

THOUGH THEY APPEAR TO BE IN THE MINORITY, there are detractors of the plan Downtown. Some Community Board 1 members challenged the board’s involvement in the issue and a few spoke against it at hearings.

A business owner one block from the site, who asked not to be identified, agreed with those who said the proposal was disrespectful to the victims and their families.

“Freedom of religion is great, but why there?” he wondered aloud. “It’s too close, too soon.”

“It’s a New York issue, and most people are saying this is not a very good idea,” North Moore Street resident Joseph Nunna said as he watched an Aug. 22 protest from a distance. “But they shouldn’t be making decisions based on some people who drive up here from Tennessee and yell against Muslims.”

FOR ALMOST NINE YEARS, the five-story former warehouse at 45-47 Park Place was seldom mentioned among buildings damaged on Sept. 11. It was abandoned by its former tenant, the Burlington Coat Factory, after the attacks, and had remained vacant until July 2009, when its ground floor interior was quietly converted into a makeshift Islamic prayer space.

In May, the building’s new owners, Soho Properties, along with the Islamic group Cordoba Initiative, revealed plans to tear down the derelict building and replace it with a 13-story community center, with a prayer space on the ground floor. The proposal, which some speculated might be met with criticism from Community Board 1, instead drew applause from the board’s Financial District Committee when the project’s planners, including Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, introduced it.

But news of the committee’s approval spread fast, and by the time the full Community Board was scheduled to discuss the issue later that month, staff at the board’s office said they were bombarded by angry phone calls and letters from around the country and the world. Some of the messages caused them concern for their safety.

“There was a period of time when we weren’t allowing people [up to the office] because we were getting threats,” said the board’s office manager, Lucy Acevedo. “For about a week they had to call us upstairs before we let anybody in.”

After three hours of scathing public comment against the project at the board’s May meeting—virtually none of which was delivered by Lower Manhattan residents—Community Board 1 upheld the Financial District Committee’s vote 29-1, with 10 members abstaining. The resolution they passed only supported the “community uses” of the project and “took no position” on its religious function.

The Cordoba Initiative’s project conforms to zoning laws, so only if the Landmarks Preservation Commission declared 45-47 Park Place a protected individual landmark could the city prevent the center from being built.

At the Cordoba group’s request, the commission took up the matter in July, with Community Board 1 siding with the group’s position that the existing building could be torn down. Having let the building languish in a bureaucratic holding pattern for close to 20 years, the commission ruled in the developers’ favor.

Carl Glassman / Tribeca Trib

Landmarks Commissioners on the historic worth of 45-47 Park Place, a five-story former warehouse damaged on 9/11 and slated to be replaced by a mosque and community center.

During the commission’s hearings, dozens of opponents to the project used the opportunity to again rail against the Cordoba group’s plans and, at times, the Islamic religion itself, rarely mentioning the architectural character of the building or the neighborhood around it. Some argued that it should be preserved because it was punctured by a piece of landing gear thrown from United Airlines flight 175 as it slammed into the World Trade Center.

Landmarks Commissioner Christopher Moore acknowledged that the building was an important piece of the story of Sept. 11. But, he said, “the memory of that day does not reside in the landing gear, or the building.”

Nor, many in Lower Manhattan say, would the proposed Islamic center reside in a place where it does not belong.

“I don’t know who’s heading the protest here,” said Irene Widjaja, her voice rising above a crowd of demonstrators half a block away. “But I can guarantee by the way they talk it’s not anyone who lives around this neighborhood.”


IF LOWER MANHATTANITES AND MANY AROUND THE COUNTRY differ over a community center and mosque on Park Place, their familiarity with the neighborhood—and the project—may also be miles apart.

At 13 stories tall, the building would not be visible from street level at the World Trade Center site, including the Memorial Park (a 19-story office tower stands opposite the Park51 site). The Cordoba project could be seen from the upper floors of whichever of Larry Silverstein’s planned office towers along Church St. is northernmost, but not from buildings to the south. From the 1,776-foot-tall 1 World Trade Center, a 13-story building at 45-47 Park Place would only be visible from the very top floors, according to 3D simulations run by the Trib in Google Earth.

Often labeled by the media and opponents as a “mega-mosque,” preliminary plans show only the ground floor—about 7 percent—of the Park51 project would be used exclusively for worship, just as the current first floor at that address is used today. The rest, according to the developers, would be outfitted with public facilities such as a 500-seat performing arts theater, fitness center, swimming pool, and library, conference rooms, basketball courts and restaurants, all of which they say will be open to the public.

Community Board 1 saw no connection with “Ground Zero” (a term rarely used by Lower Manhattanites) when the proposal was introduced to the board. It was referred to CB1’s Financial District Committee and, notably, not its World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee.

“It’s always frustrating to see people who aren’t New Yorkers, from outside the state even, try to weigh in on what should or should not be occurring in Lower Manhattan,” CB1 chairwoman Julie Menin told the Trib. “If anyone is concerned about what happens in our neighborhood, I would love for them to come to our meetings and have a dialogue with us.”

—Additional reporting by Carl Glassman