Posted on 08/11/2010 11:02:53 AM PDT by Dutchgirl
Soho Properties has paid some $5 million in cash to buy the Burlington Coat Factory building, a building that yields no income. They are paying rent to hold rights to the Con Ed building, which also yields no income. All of this in the midst of the worst commercial property slump in memory, in an area of New York with a very uncertain economic future. And these are not super-rich guys: Sharif el-Gamal lives in an Upper West Side apartment purchased in 2007 for $1 million. Click here to read what $1 million bought in Manhattan before the crash.
You can see why the Gamal-Moussa team would be dazzled by the notion that philanthropists in the Persian Gulf might donate $100 million to raise a grand gleaming Islamic center in lower Manhattan. You can tuck a lot of development fees into a $100 million project. And if not a mosque … what else do you do with their two loser properties on Park Place?
(Excerpt) Read more at frumforum.com ...
David Frum making sense? Wow, that would REALLY be something!
It does make sense - I hope Frum is right.
“So here’s my guess about the future. The money will not be found. The mosque will not be built. “
You should limit your your bets to a lottery ticket here and there. $100 million is a third of a plane for them, and imagine the goodwill they gain in Arabistan
LOL! So true.
“what else do you do with their two loser properties on Park Place?”
Buy Boardwalk too, and put up hotels. Duh!
Yep. I'm not saying Frum's argument isn't completely without merit, but the fact of the matter is - as you point out - $100 million isn't anything to these people.
Whatever the motivation was (or wasn't) to start this project, the Muzzies have access to the funds to finish, and almost nothing would please these Islamicists more than building a shrine to Allah that towers over that empty hole that used to be the World Trade Center.
He is on the right track. I have been saying this all along. The spin of a “multi-cultural center” is for the politically-correct useful idiots in the American Media.
Their real goal is to expand their image (and get funds) in the Mid-east. Maybe it is really for a mosque, maybe it is for purely business purposes, but they don’t mind the controversy at all. To the passive-aggressive Muslim psyche who respect but hate the USA, this project is a big billboard for the Muslim world - “Look what we have acheived in NY City, at Ground Zero no less! We are important guys!!”
And if it fails? Well, just play the race-bigotry card. They win free PR back in the Mid-East either way.
yep, plus no one said it has to be exactly $100 million. $20-$50 million will build a decent whatever they want to build
That seems to put the whole issue in a new light. Maybe NY pols have a piece of this.
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