A proposal for a mosque and Islamic cultural center, planned to go up on Park Place, less than 600 feet from the World Trade Center site, was met with unanimous and enthusiastic approval from Community Board 1 members May 5.

The Cordoba Initiative, an Islamic group touting its focus on improving relations between Muslim and non-Muslim cultures, plans to raze the 4-story building it purchased last summer at 45 Park Place—formerly a Burlington Coat Factory outlet. The building, just two blocks from the World Trade Center site, has been mostly vacant since it was damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks, when the landing gear of a hijacked airliner tore through its roof.

In place of the current building, where the Initiative has been hosting weekly prayer services since late last year, the group hopes to construct a gleaming 13-story worship, educational and cultural center. Daisy Khan, the Initiative’s executive director, said the center’s programming would be modeled after established religious community centers such as the 92nd Street Y.

“It’s going to be a place not only for Muslim activity, but interfaith activity of the highest order,” Khan said.

While planning for the new center—to be called the Cordoba House—is still in the preliminary stages, Khan said the Initiative hopes to outfit the $100 million facility with a 500-seat performing arts theater, fitness center, swimming pool, and library, as well as public conference rooms, basketball courts and restaurants.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who co-founded the Initiative with Khan following the Sept. 11 attacks, said the center’s construction would be the culmination of years of planning, as well as the physical manifestation of his group’s efforts to better integrate Muslims into the larger American culture.

“We see it as a major step toward in the Americanization of the Muslim community,” Rauf said. “We need to evolve from being immigrant Muslims in America to being American Muslims.”

“From a programmatic point of view, this has never been done before,” he added. “If we do this right, we want to franchise this concept, and build other Cordoba Houses like this in other American cities, and cities around the globe.”

The proposal, which some speculated might be met with criticism from Community Board 1, instead drew a round of applause from the board’s Financial District Committee during a presentation Wednesday night. The 12-member committee voted unanimously in support of the center’s construction.

“Everything I’ve seen here, I like very much,” committee chairman Ro Sheffe said following the group’s presentation. “I think it’s a wonderful asset to the community.”

Actual work on the center isn’t likely to begin for another two to three years, Khan said, and will take approximately two years to finish. Khan said the first steps would be to hold an international design competition to determine the center’s final form, as well as a sweeping fundraising campaign to finance its construction. However long it takes, committee member Pat Moore said new construction at 45 Park Place was long overdue.

“Finally, we get that ugly space taken care of,” she said. 

Despite a wealth of endorsements from secular and faith-based organizations in the city—including, according to the group, the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, the Jewish Community Relations Council, Trinity Church and the city’s Catholic Archdiocese—Khan said in an interview with the Trib that she understands if some are hesitant to embrace the idea of an Islamic institution so close to the site of the attacks, which were carried out by Muslim extremists.

“Most of the resistance we’ve encountered has been from people who don’t know the Muslim community,” Khan said. “Its just fear of the unknown, and it’s our job to approach and reach out to those people, and try to show them what our community and what our message is really all about.” 

The Financial District Committee’s support could be viewed as a significant victory for the project, especially in that it came just five days after an attempted car-bombing in Times Square, which authorities say appears to have been planned in retaliation for a U.S. attack on Taliban leaders in Pakistan. Khan said that while events like the Time Square incident can be damaging to groups like the Cordoba Initiative, they can also be a call to action for peaceful advocates of the Islamic faith.

“It sets us back, because we end up having to prove ourselves all over again,” Khan said. “On the other hand, it’s a huge motivator for us to push back against these kinds of extremist views and actions.”