Recently disclosed plans to demolish the former Burlington Coat Factory building at 45 Park Place in TriBeCa and replace it with a 13-story new community center of mosque may be dashed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, according to an article by Matt Dunning today in the TriBeCa Trib.

The commission held a hearing on a proposal to landmark the building in September 1989 but never voted on it and it has not been re-calendared, but Mr. Dunning's article said that Elisabeth De Bourbon, the commission's spokesperson, said the commission plans "to hold another public hearing, but a date has not been set."

The Cordoba Initiative, an Islamic group, announced plans earlier this month to tear down the 152-year-old building on the site that has been mostly vacant since it was damaged in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center when the landing gear of one of the hijacked airliners tore into its roof, Mr. Dunning wrote. Muslim prayer services are held in the building on Fridays.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan co-founded the Cordoba Initiative and bought the building last year and have said the planned new building would cost about $100 million and would have a 500-seat performing arts theater, fitness center, swimming pool, and library, as well as public conference rooms, basketball courts and restaurants. The Khans have said that the new building is "going to be a place not only for Muslim activity, but interfaith activity of the highest order."

"Constructed in 1858 for a shipping firm, the Italian Renaissance Palazzo-style building was one of a handful of stand-alone structures in southern TriBeCa that was nominated - but never designated - as individual landmarks, as part of a community-led push in the 1980s to create TriBeCa's historic districts. De Bourbon said it was unclear why the commission never rendered a decision on the building's proposed designation. Daisy Khan, who co-founded the Initiative with her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and serves as its executive director, could not immediately be reached for comment," the article said.

Ms. De Bourbon told the TriBeCa Trib that the Cordoba "Initiative met with the Landmarks Commission staff in March to discuss the existing building's possible designation and were told that they could not demolish the building until the commission voted either to designate it as a landmark or remove it from consideration."

"At a May 5 meeting of Community Board 1's Financial District Committee, the group's land use attorney Sheldon Friedman did not mention the landmark issue directly, but said he believed the project would move forward without interference from the city. 'We're quite confident that this program will proceed in an as-of-right manner,' Friedman said. At that meeting, the project proposal was met with praise and applause, and a resolution supporting it won unanimous approval. But a backlash ensued among some families of Sept. 11 victims, among others," the article added.

The controversy has led to "a reworking of the CB1 resolution, which the board will take up at its full meeting on Tuesday, May 25," according to the article.