By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Community Board 1 will decide next week whether to reopen discussion of a controversial mosque and community center near Ground Zero.
The board already voted last month to support the secular aspects of the 13-story, $100 million Cordoba House — the carefully worded resolution took no position on the religious aspects.
But Allan Tannenbaum, a board member, believes CB1 should not have taken any position on the project at all, and he wants the board to reconsider its vote. At least two other board members, Paul Sipos and Paul Hovitz, agree with Tannenbaum. But many others do not.
The board’s Financial District Committee will decide on July 7 whether they want to hold a new discussion of the project, as Tannenbaum is requesting. If the committee agrees to take up the issue, they would not do so until September, because the board does not meet in August, said Ro Sheffe, chairman of the Financial District Committee.
Sheffe said he sees no reason to reopen the contentious topic, which drew hundreds of people to an emotional four-hour meeting last month.
“We have debated this issue quite extensively,” Sheffe said Monday. “The matter has been far more than adequately dealt with.”
Still, Sheffe said he wants to leave the final decision to his committee members.
The Financial District Committee voted unanimously to support the project last month, but Tannenbaum said Monday that he hoped some members would change their minds.
“The community center and the mosque are not separable,” Tannenbaum said Monday. “We shouldn’t have taken this up.”
