Park51
Park51 was a development originally envisioned as a 13-story Islamic community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The developers hoped to promote interfaith dialogue. Due to its proposed location, two blocks from the World Trade Center site of the September 11 attacks, the proposed building was widely and controversially referred to as the "Ground Zero mosque", and the issue was amplified as an astroturf campaign to influence the 2010 United States elections.
The project would replace an existing 1850s Italianate building that was damaged in the attacks. The original design was by SOMA Architects principal Michel Abboud, who wrestled for months with the challenge of making the building fit naturally into its lower Manhattan surroundings. He felt it should have a contemporary design, but also look Islamic. His design included a 500-seat auditorium, theater, performing arts center, fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, childcare area, bookstore, culinary school, art studio, food court, and a memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks. It also included a prayer space for the Muslim community that would accommodate 1,000–2,000 people.
In late September 2011, a temporary Islamic center opened in renovated space at the Park51 location. In summer 2014, it was announced that there would instead be a three-story museum with a prayer space, as well as condos, at 49–51 Park Place. The plans were changed again in September 2015 when the owner announced a 70-story luxury condominium building at the site. In May 2016, financing was secured for a 43-story condominium building with room for an Islamic cultural museum adjacent to it.
The condominium building, called 45 Park Place, started construction in 2017 and was nearly completed by 2019. Construction of the Islamic cultural space, slated to contain of space and measure tall at 51 Park Place, had not begun.
Background
Plans to build what was then called "Cordoba House" were reported in The New York Times in December 2009, at a location that was already in use for Muslim worship. Early response to the project was not pronounced, and one libertarian commentator provided positive coverage.The plans were reviewed by Manhattan Community Board 1 in May 2010, at which time they attracted some national media attention.
The project's organizers stated that it was intended to be "a platform for multi-faith dialogue, striving to promote inter-community peace, tolerance and understanding; locally in New York City, nationally in America, and globally." They said that it was modeled on the noted Manhattan Jewish Community Center at 76th Street and Amsterdam Ave. The proposal triggered an intense nationwide controversy.
The original Cordoba House sparked a controversy among well funded experts, already engaged in what some have labeled as misinformation campaigns, warning of the threat of radical Islam. Numerous other protests, which have reached millions of Americans, were sparked by a campaign launched by conservative bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, founders of Stop Islamization of America, who dubbed the project the "Ground Zero mosque", and a national controversy ensued. Conservative media also involved in protests against Islam following the September 11 attacks had published material during previous campaigns.
In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United. This allowed unlimited funding of special interest groups in American politics as long as the groups did not coordinate with political parties. The campaign against Park51, marked the first explosion in what critics call dark money into American elections. These campaigns amplified opinions of supporters argued that arguments against the building are based on the notion that Islam, rather than Islamic radicals, was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center. The New York Times reported that Muslim religious facilities previously existed at the World Trade Center itself before the attacks.
Naming of the project
The project was originally called Cordoba House, then renamed Park51, in reference to the street address on Park Place. Later, the Imam leading the project introduced some ambiguity by again referring to the project as "Cordoba House". The Park51 website then clarified that Park51 is the community center, while Cordoba House is the "interfaith and religious component of the center".Cordoba Initiative said the name "Cordoba House" was meant to invoke 8th–11th century Córdoba, Spain, which they called a model of peaceful coexistence among Muslims, Christians, and Jews. According to The Economist, the name was chosen because Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a center of learning in Córdoba together. The name was criticized; for example, Newt Gingrich said that it was "a deliberately insulting term" that symbolizes the Muslim conquerors' victory over Christian Spaniards, and noted that the Muslims had converted a Cordoba church into the third largest mosque in the world. Similarly, Raymond Ibrahim, an outspoken critic of Islam and former associate director of the Middle East Forum, said the project and name were not "a gesture of peace and interfaith dialogue" but were "allusive of Islamic conquest and consolidation" and that Americans should realize that mosques are not "Muslim counterparts to Christian churches" but rather, "are symbols of domination and centers of radicalization". The opposition to Park51 believes that Islam builds mosques on "conquered territory" as symbols of "territory" and "conquest".
Park51 is often referred to as the "Ground Zero mosque". Since it is neither located directly on the former World Trade Center site, Ground Zero, nor primarily a mosque, some news media have advised against the use of this term. The Associated Press suggested several alternate terms including "mosque 2 blocks from WTC site", "Muslim center near WTC site", "mosque near ground zero", and "mosque near WTC site". Cordoba Initiative says the building is not strictly a mosque. Anushay Hossain in The Huffington Post criticises the use of the name Ground Zero mosque, and says it is "Not a mosque but an Islamic Community Center". Jean Marbella in The Baltimore Sun says the building is closer to a YMCA center than a house of worship.
History
Site use
Before 2001
45–47 Park Place was constructed between 1857 and 1858, in the Palazzo style architecture.The stone-faced building, designed by Daniel D. Badger, was originally constructed for a shipping firm of a prominent New York shipping magnate. Its Italian palazzo style was a throwback to a prior time of European grandeur, and was intended to evoke images of economic might. The building is an example of the "store and loft" structures that were prevalent in the dry goods warehouse districts of Lower Manhattan.
The building was one of only a few stand-alone structures in southern Tribeca that were nominated – but never designated – as individual landmarks, during an effort in the 1980s to create a Tribeca historic district. In September 1989, the Commission had held public hearings and considered the building for landmark status, but it never acted on the matter, and the building was "calendared" ever since. By August 2010, city building records reflected that out of a group of 29 buildings that had been proposed for historic landmark designation in 1989, including 45–47 Park Place, twenty-three had been deemed landmarks and six were pending. The pending applications included 45–47 Park Place. At that point, New York City had more than 11,000 landmarked buildings.
Muslims had a presence in Lower Manhattan for many years prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks. At least two mosques existed near the World Trade Center, and several designated Muslim prayer rooms existed within the World Trade Center buildings.
September 11, 2001, attacks
During the September 11 attacks, the five-story building at 45–47 Park Place, between West Broadway and Church Street, was severely damaged. When United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center, part of the plane's landing gear, engine and fuselage came out the north side of the tower and crashed through the roof of 45–47 Park Place, and through two of its floors. The plane parts destroyed three floor beams, and severely compromised the building's internal structure. The damage was not immediately noticed during an exterior assessment. It was later discovered during an interior assessment. In April 2013, the New York Police Department announced that surveyors inspecting the building had discovered a wide piece, long airplane part complete with Boeing identification number wedged in an wide alley between 51 Park and 50 Murray Street. Initially officials thought it was part of the landing gear but Boeing confirmed it was the trailing edge flap actuation support structure of an airplane flap from a Boeing 767, the type of jet which hit both towers. A photograph of the piece initially showed a rope around it. Police said the rope was used by an officer who lassoed it to see the identification number. Boeing could not say which specific plane it was from.2001–2009
The 45–47 Park Place building, located about two blocks north of the World Trade Center site, was owned by Stephen Pomerantz and his wife Kukiko Mitani and leased to the Burlington Coat Factory. For years, Mitani attempted to sell the building, at one point asking for $18 million. It lay abandoned until its purchase in July 2009. For several months thereafter, the building was used as an overflow prayer space for up to 450 Muslims, with services led by Feisal Abdul Rauf, an Imam based at the al-Farah mosque in nearby TriBeCa.Purchase and investors
In July 2009, the real estate company and developer Soho Properties purchased the building and property at 45–47 Park Place for $4.85 million in cash. Soho Properties' Chairman and CEO, Sharif El-Gamal, initially planned to build a condominium complex at the site, but was convinced by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's idea for a community center with a prayer space. El-Gamal's business partner is Nour Mousa, the nephew of Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League.The investors in the transaction were the Cordoba Initiative, a tax-exempt foundation with assets of $20,000, and the American Society for Muslim Advancement, also a non-profit organization. At the time, Rauf was founder, CEO, and Executive Director of Cordoba Initiative, and founder and CEO of ASMA, and his wife, Daisy Khan, was the ASMA Executive Director. In the Cordoba Initiative's first five years, from 2004–08, it raised less than $100,000. Both organizations were run out of the same New York office. The two foundations proposed to use the property as the site for a $100 million community center modeled after NYC's Jewish Community Centers and YMCAs. They were working on the project with El-Gamal, their co-developer.
The 49–51 Park Place half of the "45–51" parcel was still owned by the utility Con Edison. Soho Properties paid an additional $700,000 to assume a $33,000-a-year lease with Con Ed, for its adjacent attached former sub-station. The plan was to build the facility on the site of the two buildings, as the lease for 49–51 Park Place was expire in 2071. The two buildings were connected internally, with common walls having been taken down. El-Gamal informed Con Ed in February 2010 that he wanted to exercise his purchase option on the lease. Although the price was reportedly estimated at $10–$20 million, El-Gamal said the cost "is not an issue". The sale was to be reviewed by the New York Public Service Commission, where it might face a vote by a five-member board controlled by the New York governor's office.
The specific location of the planned facility, "where a piece of the wreckage fell", so close to the World Trade Center, was a primary selling point for the Muslims who bought the building. Rauf said it "sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11" and "We want to push back against the extremists."