Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show.
El-Gamal’s company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department.
The delinquency is a possible violation of El-Gamal’s lease with Con Edison, which owns half of the proposed building site on Park Place. El-Gamal owns the other half but must pay taxes on the entire parcel.
This leaves the property open to tax liens and even seizure by the authorities in lieu of payment. Which opens up a whole new can of halal meat. Does Gamal want to turn the old Burlington Coat Factory into an Islamic center to avoid paying more tax on the property? Is the whole concept merely a tax shelter? Will the city/state/IRS seize the property – well within their rights to do so – and make this whole kerfuffle go away without fucking up the First Amendment in the process? Or will the idiot gas-me-last Jew mayor of NYC give El-Gamal and the Cordoba Initiative a complete pass in an effort to “build bridges”?
Unless El-Gamal and his band of merry Muslims come up with some big money fast, the whole project might disappear in a cloud of smoke. Wait, what does that make me think of…?
Unfortunately, as a former NYC Finance Department employee, I can assure you that the City will NEVER foreclose on this property, ever under any circumstances. That’s official policy after the days when the City nearly went bankrupt owning and cleaning up every destitute property in the five boroughs.
More likely is your other assumption, that the City will give the owner a massive tax break once he proves his “nonprofit” status (and, no doubt, that application is already slooooooowly making it’s way through the Finance Dept. offices).
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Definitely dark forces at work. Even with the intense opposition nationally, there’s very few in NYC government with the courage to stand up to these bastards. I know that at the lower levels of city government the rank and file is lousy with “mosque supporters” types, so I would not be surprised if all the permits etc. are fast tracked through this notoriously difficult and ultra slow bureaucracy. That said, even if the mosque never gets built, the attempt has begun a trend of excessive mosque building nation-wide. They want the kind of atmosphere that’s been created in the UK and the Netherlands. And there are plenty of syncophants here to help facilitate these goals.
Maybe “We The People” can assume control of the property through a “Sheriff’s Sale” or the NY equivalent. I would be willing to donate to such a worthy cause on behalf of a real estate developer.
[...] addition to not paying taxes on the Ground Zero/Burlington Coat Factory property, Mr. El-Gamal has quite a rapsheet – and some [...]
[...] RIGHT GIRL– Busy Morning; Sharif El-Gamal doesn’t like paying taxes; I need a gub’mint job; About those “death panels”; I’m gonna have to vote for Rob Ford; [...]