NYC's 'Ground Zero Mosque' that garnered national outrage opening near WTC after 9/11 faces

•  FORECLOSURE for defaulting on $7.5million loanLenders Blueberry Funding claim developer Sharif El-Gamal owes at least $7.5 million after 'repeatedly' missing mortgage payments
•  The site was at one point due to be turned into an Islamic center which became known as the 'Ground Zero Mosque'
•  A backlash saw El-Gamal pivot to constructing luxury condos which remain unfinished

By BETHAN SEXTON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 21:10 EST, 14 December 2023 | UPDATED: 21:10 EST, 14 December 2023


The 'Ground Zero Mosque' that sparked protests due to its proximity to the World Trade Center site after 9/11 is facing foreclosure for defaulting on a $7.5 million loan.

Developer Sharif El-Gamal's vacant lot at 49-51 Park Place faces repossession, along with his incomplete luxury condo tower at 45 Park Place.

The site garnered national attention when El-Gamal proposed building an Islamic center on the plot, just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.




Following protests in 2010, the plans were shelved and the developer pivoted to constructing high-end condos.

But court filings state his company has 'repeatedly failed' to make payments, with lender Blueberry Funding requesting permission to foreclose the premises and sell it off.

The site which became known as the 'Ground Zero Mosque' is facing foreclosure for defaulting on mortgage payments totaling $7.5 million

The vacant lot just blocks from the World Trade Center was due to be turned into an Islamic Center by developed Sharif El-Gamal, sparking furious protests from the families of 9/11 victims

The demonstrations were met with counter-protests from anti racism activists who argued there is a right to religious freedom

Jeremy Doberman, who represents the lender, said the company had tried to negotiate with El-Gamal numerous times.

His company, Park Place Partners Development was sent a notice of default, which went unanswered according to the suit, that states he owes $7.5 million plus interest.

'There comes a time when people's assurances are no longer good enough and in order to get paid back, you have to take things to the next step,' Doberman told The Real Deal. 'This is what the legal filing represents.'

The lawsuit is seeking repayment of the debt, along with at least $10,000 in legal fees.

The outstanding debt appears to be significantly lower than the value of the site if it were to be developed.

El-Gamal first acquired the dilapidated building in 2009. The premises formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory store and had been damaged by the fuselage of one of the hijacked planes.

The store's two selling floors were destroyed when the landing gear from one of the planes tore through during the attacks.

El-Gamal put forward plans for a mosque as part of a proposed 13-story Muslim community center, which would have included a swimming pool, gym, theatre and sports facilities.

Blueberry Funding, which lent the money to developer Sharif El-Gamal's company, is seeking the right to repossess 49-51 Park Place, along with an incomplete luxury condo tower at 45 Park Place

The site has a rocky history dating back to when it was first acquired by El-Gamal in 2009 who obtained permission to build a mosque despite the fierce backlash. Pictured: Leaders from various Muslim organizations at a press conference in front of the proposed site of mosque near Ground Zero on September 20, 2010

Today the site remains vacant except for a construction crane. El-Gamal decided to pivot to building luxury condos at the site in the wake of the protests which remain unfinished. However, the businessman remains positive about its prospects and teased 'big announcements' for the property

Construction was due to begin on September 11, 2011 - the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

The plans were divisive, with some 9/11 victims' families branding the proposals insensitive, while others stressed the need for religious freedom.

Protests against the construction were met with anti-racism demonstrations.

At some point amid the furor, El-Gamal quietly shelved the plans and, in 2014, began to develop luxury condos.

Plans for a scaled-down Islamic center stalled due to a lack of benefactors and funding.

Today, the 4,700-square-foot lot is only home to a construction crane, with the proposed condos unfinished.

But El-Gamal remains positive about the project's completion next year after recent success in a foreclosure lawsuit initiated by Malaysia's Maybank.

However Maybank's $170 million position was recently acquired by MSD Partners, which has ramped up the battle to foreclose 45 Park Place.

In a recent email, El-Gamal teased forthcoming 'big announcements' for the embattled project, the New York Post reports.

Any developments will be running in tandem with his ongoing foreclosure battles, including at Margaritaville, his Times Square hotel.

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Mortgage Crisis Inspires Churches to Send Lenten Season Message to Banks

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: March 9, 2012

During the recent weeks of Lent, the Rev. Ryan Bell has led his Southern California congregation into the penitential spirit of the season. He has preached about the prophet Isaiah’s admonition “to loose the bonds of injustice.” He has replaced his church’s ebullient praise songs with somber, reflective music. He has sent his members a list of ordinary comforts to give up until Easter, with suggestions from caffeine to Facebook.

Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

The Rev. Robert Rien closed a church bank account.

“To right the wrongs of the world is as much a part of the Lenten experience as to repent ourselves,” Mr. Bell, 40, the pastor of Hollywood Adventist Church near Los Angeles said in a phone interview this week. “During this season, when we individually are examining our lives, we think it’s appropriate for the institutions that affect us to examine theirs.”

Across the country, dozens of other clergy members and congregations have taken similar action over the past three years. Beginning with two ministers in a bedroom suburb outside Oakland, the movement has grown to encompass about 25 congregations, according to the PICO National Network, a coalition of congregations involved in social justice that has taken up the campaign. By PICO’s estimate, congregations have withdrawn $16 million, and their individual members and organizational partners an additional $15 million, from banks deeply implicated in the foreclosure crisis — primarily Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.

The effort has become so closely conflated with Lent this year that a group of San Francisco clergy members spilled symbolic ashes outside a Wells Fargo A.T.M. in an Ash Wednesday protest. The ministers called for a “foreclosure sabbatical” — invoking the biblical term for the ancient Judaic concept of forgiving debts every seventh year.

The Rev. Richard Smith of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal church in San Francisco, likened the divestment campaign and public protests to early Christianity’s ritual of “reconciliation of the penitents.” Far from taking place in the private sanctity of the confessional, that rite occurred in public, with the penitent overseen by a priest and required to present himself before a bishop.

“It seemed like a parallel to us,” said Mr. Smith, 62. “Our banks have done a great deal of damage in a very public way. So it seems appropriate as we enter into a season of penitence that we invite those who separated themselves from the community to repent with us. It’s basically Ethics 101.”

Last month, federal and state officials reached a provisional accord with five banks — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial — for a $26 billion settlement that includes reducing mortgage principal for homeowners in danger of default because of the steep decline in property values.

T. J. Crawford, a spokesman for Bank of America, said that even before that accord was reached the bank had modified the mortgage loans of one million customers and had met with PICO and other religion-based groups. “We value all of our relations,” he said, “and would prefer dialogue to divestiture.”

For the clergy members and churches active on the foreclosure issue, however, the animosity began building years ago. The current campaign may have had its genesis on the Sunday in 2008 when a 10-year-old girl named Jeannette walked up to her pastor after church to say goodbye because her family was moving.

As soon as the child spoke to him, the Rev. Mario Howell of Antioch Church Family in the East Bay area of Northern California recently recalled, he realized that Jeanette’s parents had not been at worship that morning. What, he asked her, was going on? The girl explained that her mother and father — a teacher and probation officer, respectively — had lost their home to foreclosure.

Soon enough, Mr. Howell said, he heard similar stories from other members, all of them employed, most of them first-time homeowners who had striven to move out of Oakland. During 2010, the church’s monthly intake from tithes and offerings fell by half to $14,000, far below its own mortgage payment of $23,000. Last March, Mr. Howell had to sell the building to a religious order, the Wesleyans, which is allowing the congregation to remain there. The church recently pulled out $175,000 in savings from the local Bank of America branch.

During the same few years, the Rev. Robert Rien of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a Roman Catholic church across town from Mr. Howell’s, was learning that 24 families from the 1,000 in his congregation were threatened with foreclosure. He accompanied many of them to meetings with their mortgage banks to try to renegotiate terms.

“You would’ve thought the collar would have some influence,” said Father Rien, 65. “It didn’t. These people were engineers, accountants, working in medical offices, in the building trades. No matter how they pleaded with the banks, they didn’t find any understanding. It was ruthless behavior. I had the scales pulled off my eyes.”

Father Rien met Mr. Howell through a local interfaith coalition that is part of the PICO network. He wrote about the banks’ behavior in the church bulletin and preached about it from the pulpit. In late 2009, with the endorsement of the congregation’s trustees and pastoral council, he pulled out $135,000 from Bank of America.

“It’s a grain of sand to Bank of America,” Father Rien said, “but we needed to send a message that you can’t do this to people.”

With coverage in the religion media and organizational contacts through the PICO network, that message spread from the East Bay in late 2008 and early 2009, expanding into the national movement of this Lent.

“I can say that it’s caught on, but not enough,” said Mr. Howell, 61. “There’s still not enough churches that understand the plight of their people — that if one family loses their home, it’s like all of us go down.”

E-mail: sgf1@columbia.edu

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 9, 2012

A previous version of this story said federal officials had reached a provisional accord with four banks for a $25 million settlement. The agreement was with five banks for a $26 billion settlement.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 10, 2012, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Mortgage Crisis Inspires Churches to Send Lenten Season Message to Banks.

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In banks we trust? Churches in U.S. hit by foreclosures

Michael Babad
Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011 4:51PM EST

Churches hit by foreclosure
Churches in the United States are finding they're not immune to the real estate crisis.

Many churches, The Wall Street Journal reports today, also can't pay their mortgages because they took on too much debt and now face smaller congregations and declining collections amid high unemployment levels.

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