The Boston Redevelopment Authority, which is the citys municipal planning agency and which is comprised of mayoral appointees, conveyed the land for the ISBs purchase in 2000 at more than $400,000. However, the city of Boston only charged ISB $175,000 for the land, with an agreement that the ISB perform other services for the city to make up the $225,000 remainder. The ISB agreed to deliver a series of lectures at Roxbury Community College, to assist the Roxbury Community College Foundation in its fundraising efforts, and to maintain a Boston play area. The deal was later described in media coverage as an apparent financial handout and a possible government subsidy from the city of Boston to the ISB.
"The Boston Redevelopment Authority, which is the citys municipal planning agency and which is comprised of mayoral appointees....
"ISB trustee Walid Fitaihi, who wrote that Jews would be punished for their oppression, murder and rape of the worshippers of Allah, helped broker the ISBs deal with the Boston Redevelopment Authority."
City of Boston Gave Subsidy to Bombing Suspects Radical Mosque
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Long article [11 pgs] from Nov 2008 below (with just a few snippets here):
Menino's mosque: The bizarre story behind the construction of Boston's most controversial building
"Better known as the Roxbury mosque, the ISBCC has been in the works for more than 20 years. A few weeks ago it finally opened its doors for prayer five years late, millions over budget, and still far from complete...........
"Mayor Menino, in a fit of multicultural ecumenicalism, approved the sale of city-owned land to the mosque for the bargain basement and still controversial price of $175,000, plus the promise of in-kind services, including upkeep of nearby parks. The predictable uproar that arose in the wake of not only selling land well below market rates, but also selling it to a religious institution in contravention of the supposed separation of church and state, was supposed to be muffled by making the complex available for community use. But oops that never happened.....
Originally intended to minister to an urban congregation of African-American Muslims, the mosque project was turned over by the city, with no fanfare and little notice, to the control of suburban-based Muslims of largely Saudi Arabian heritage: the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), which more recently became the Muslim American Society of Boston (MAS-Boston). Perhaps the city believed, incorrectly, that one Muslim community could easily step in for another. In fact, the two groups are quite different.
If it was not, however, for the generosity of conservative Middle Eastern Muslims (often a euphemism for those who are hostile to or suspicious of Westerners and Americans), the mosque never would have been built. Most of the cost, estimated at $15.6 million by MAS-Boston, has come from Egyptian, Saudi, and other Arab donors.