The chairman and chief executive officer of SoHo Properties, Sharif El-Gamal, maintains that Park51, the proposed community center near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, "will not move its location," in an article he wrote for the editorial page of the April 22, 2011 edition of The New York Daily News.
"We believe it violates American values to essentially declare what would be a Muslim-free zone here or anywhere else in the country," he wrote, adding that "despite enormous challenges, Park51 has made extraordinary strides since we purchased the land roughly a year and a half ago."
"We have applied for our non-profit status with the IRS. We have been approved to function as a charity by the state attorney general's office. We have developed preliminary architectural designs. We have conducted market research. We have formulated programming and launched a website. We currently have a founder's board and will be expanding this in the coming months. We will soon hire senior executives, start interim programming within the temporary space, and launch a fund-raising campaign," he wrote.
"Park51," he continued, "has pledged that our financing will be made public, that we will not take any funds from entities or governments hostile to America. We will work with the relevant government agencies to make sure all our funding is vetted and approved."
He said that the project "is not a mosque," but "first and foremost an Islamic community center, modeled after the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side." "When completed, it will contain a gym, a pool, a pre-K, a day care facility, an amphitheater, a culinary institute, a 9/11 memorial and more. There will be a separate prayer space for the Muslim community living and working downtown."
In a separate development in the same neighborhood, "an office tower near Ground Zero once dubbed the least occupied building in New York, is adding the Anne Frank Center USA as a new tenant," according to an article in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal by Craig Karmin.
The non-profit organization is leasing 2,500 square feet of space on the ground floor of 100 Church Street. The center, which provides educational programs about the Holocaust, is currently on Crosby Street, and the article said it expects to reopen at 100 Church Street in time for the 10-year anniversary of the September 11, 2011, terrorist attacks.
The center's new location "is around the corner from Park 51, a proposed Islamic community center and prayer space that its opponents have called the Ground Zero mosque. The Anne Frank Center's new location will have a representation of Anne Frank's bedroom in the Amsterdam building where her family hid from the Nazis and where she wrote her famous diary. Her father, Otto, was the family's only survivor and founded the center and its partner organization in Amsterdam."
"We believe it violates American values to essentially declare what would be a Muslim-free zone here or anywhere else in the country," he wrote, adding that "despite enormous challenges, Park51 has made extraordinary strides since we purchased the land roughly a year and a half ago."
"We have applied for our non-profit status with the IRS. We have been approved to function as a charity by the state attorney general's office. We have developed preliminary architectural designs. We have conducted market research. We have formulated programming and launched a website. We currently have a founder's board and will be expanding this in the coming months. We will soon hire senior executives, start interim programming within the temporary space, and launch a fund-raising campaign," he wrote.
"Park51," he continued, "has pledged that our financing will be made public, that we will not take any funds from entities or governments hostile to America. We will work with the relevant government agencies to make sure all our funding is vetted and approved."
He said that the project "is not a mosque," but "first and foremost an Islamic community center, modeled after the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side." "When completed, it will contain a gym, a pool, a pre-K, a day care facility, an amphitheater, a culinary institute, a 9/11 memorial and more. There will be a separate prayer space for the Muslim community living and working downtown."
In a separate development in the same neighborhood, "an office tower near Ground Zero once dubbed the least occupied building in New York, is adding the Anne Frank Center USA as a new tenant," according to an article in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal by Craig Karmin.
The non-profit organization is leasing 2,500 square feet of space on the ground floor of 100 Church Street. The center, which provides educational programs about the Holocaust, is currently on Crosby Street, and the article said it expects to reopen at 100 Church Street in time for the 10-year anniversary of the September 11, 2011, terrorist attacks.
The center's new location "is around the corner from Park 51, a proposed Islamic community center and prayer space that its opponents have called the Ground Zero mosque. The Anne Frank Center's new location will have a representation of Anne Frank's bedroom in the Amsterdam building where her family hid from the Nazis and where she wrote her famous diary. Her father, Otto, was the family's only survivor and founded the center and its partner organization in Amsterdam."
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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