Selden mosque rebuild plan OK'd by Brookhaven panel

Despite protests from neighbors about traffic and road safety, an Islamic congregation can build an 8,000-square-foot mosque in Selden, Brookhaven's planning board ruled Monday.

The 400-member Islamic Association of Long Island received permission to demolish its 5,600-square-foot mosque and replace it with the larger facility on the same Parkhill Drive site. The association needs only building permits to begin the work, planning board chairman Vincent Pascale said.

Some residents in the community around the mosque have said the new building is too big for the neighborhood, a residential area near Middle Country Road.

But the planning board found those concerns - voiced during a tense September meeting and in dozens of letters to the board - to be "generalized comments without empirical data," said Cecile Forte, a planning board member.

The seven-member planning board - which unanimously approved a site plan for the new mosque - also recommended that the town's highway department workers "do whatever they can to mitigate traffic on Parkhill Drive," Pascale said.

Concerns about the traffic have been overstated, said Iqbal Chaudhry, president-elect of the mosque's executive committee. He added that the bigger building will give the Islamic Association more room to host interfaith events.

"We feel very embarrassed when those people come to us and we don't have space to entertain them, to seat them," he said.

The 29-year-old mosque is the oldest on Long Island.

The planning board had three times put off a chance to vote on the proposed mosque. Board members had cited the need for more public input about the project.

No one from the public spoke about the mosque during Monday's planning board meeting at Brookhaven Town Hall.

Some congregation members have said they felt the traffic and parking concerns were a mask for anti-Islamic bias, a charge residents called unfair.

Chaudhry said the mosque will host an open house for the community in the near future.