New Hyde Park civic association leaders met with town Councilwoman Lee Seeman and Kevin Cronin, commissioner of the Town of North Hempstead Building Department, last Thursday to discuss concerns about the proposed $1.4 million expansion of the Hillside Islamic Center on Hillside Avenue.
Jim McHugh, a leader of the Parks Civic Association in New Hyde Park, and Marianna Wohlgemuth, president of the Lakeville Estates Civic Association, said the civic associations wanted to discuss the expansions’ impact on the community and whether it complied with town zoning laws.
“My concern is basically for the neighbors and the neighborhood,” McHugh said. “The concern right now is the houses they’re knocking down. The people in the houses next door, now they’re going to have a parking lot.”
The civic leaders said they were also concerned about the 40-foot height of four minarets to be situated atop four corners of the Islamic center. McHugh said the height violates town code.
“The community has requested the height of the minarets be reduced,” Wohlgemuth said. “They’re not being used as a call to prayer. They’re not functional. They’re more decorative.”
Seeman said the civic leaders were shown the Islamic center’s site plan in what she called an “amicable” meeting. She said she thinks the civic leaders and the Islamic center leaders will reach an accommodation about the issues of concern.
“I think the Islamic center wants the people to be happy about things,” she said.
The center’s planned expansion would create a two-story structure replacing an existing one-story center at 300 Hillside Ave. in North New Hyde Park. The center’s leaders are sorting out issues with the town building department to secure approval for plans to start building a 9,100-square foot structure on 23,000 square feet of land after acquiring four adjacent houses in the past several months.
McHugh said the houses neighboring the Islamic center need a buffer such as a wooden “stockade” fence and plantings that will help muffle noise from the cars in the center’s parking lot and prevent headlights from disturbing the neighbors
“My concern is how are they going to buffer the parking lot they’re going to create from the residential homes,” McHugh said.
Plans for a proposed expansion of the Islamic center were rejected by the Town of North Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals last year after New Hyde Park residents expressed sharp opposition at a public hearing to the center’s plans to purchase adjacent residential properties to expand the parking lot of the existing structure.
The center has since purchased three adjacent residential properties on North 3rd Street and one property on North 2nd Street to prepare for the proposed expansion, according to Abdul Aziz Bhuiyan, president of the Hillside Islamic Center. He said the center completed the purchase of two adjacent houses on 3rd Street last summer for nearly $1 million.
Bhuyian said the center needs to expand because its congregation is growing. Plans call for children’s religious classes and adult language classes at the center.
During the month-long observance of Ramadan, the center has been leasing space in the New Hyde Park Elks Lodge on Lakeville Road to accommodate its Muslim worshippers.
Enactment of the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act in 2000 relaxed zoning restrictions on religious institutions located in residential neighborhoods. And since the Hillside Islamic Center now owns the properties adjacent to it, it only requires town building department approval of its site plans to proceed with them.
Town of North Hempstead spokesman Collin Nash said the architectural initially submitted to the building department are “insufficient,” with the building department citing more than 70 deficiencies in the plan.
“We’re waiting for them to resubmit these plans,” Nash said.
Bhuyian said the plans were resubmitted last week. He acknowledged that “some details” were missing, but said those issues have been addressed.
“The plan is the same. Some interior details may change and the height may change,” Bhuyian said.
He indicated that the Islamic center still faced a long fundraising campaign before it could start building, saying, “There’s a long way to go.”
McHugh and Wohlgemuth said they were disappointed that no representatives of the Islamic center attended the meeting with Seeman.
Bhuyian said Islamic center representatives had a prior meeting with Seeman and are awaiting word on the civic leaders’ concerns before setting up a subsequent meeting. He said the Islamic center was planning to create a buffer between its parking lot and its neighbors’ houses.
“We can plant the trees they want. We will do that,” Bhuyian said.
He said the Islamic center currently plans to raze the house it purchased on 2nd Street to expand its parking lot. The other three houses on 3rd Street are to be homes for the Islamic center’s two Imams and their assistant, he said.
He said the proposed height of the minarets on the new structure are not a violation of town code.
“We’re not building it an inch higher than what is allowed. This is much lower than any [church] spire. It will look nice,” Bhuyian said.
McHugh said his primary goal is to maintain harmony in what is already an ethnically mixed neighborhood.
“This is going to happen now. There will be no stopping this. I just want to make people in the neighborhood comfortable with this.” he said. “I’m trying to have a situation that everybody can live with in the end.”
