More questions arise about embattled Roxbury mosque project
PAUL MCMORROW AND TED SIEFER
CHURCH, MEET STATE
weeklydig.com
Something stinks in Roxbury, and for once, it’s not the Orange Line. It’s the land deal underpinning what would be the Northeast’s largest mosque—the controversial Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.
In August, 2000, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) signed a term sheet agreeing to sell a sizable chunk of public land to the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB). The terms of the deal—in which the ISB paid the BRA $175,000 cash and a variety of in-kind public benefits for a parcel of land they publicly agreed was worth $401,000—caused a firestorm.
Local activists and media argued that the land discount was both gratuitous (saving the ISB a couple hundred thousand dollars on a $22 million construction project) and constitutionally dubious (an encroachment on church-state separation). The land sale so enraged Mission Hill resident James Policastro that he sued the BRA and the city in September, 2004. Recently, a judge declined the city’s bid to have the courts dismiss the lawsuit, which questions the land deal’s constitutionality. The BRA is presently working to avoid turning documents over to Policastro’s lawyer.
However heated things have gotten so far, a series of new documents obtained by the Dig shows that, as far as the ISB land sale goes, the city’s legal and PR woes are just beginning. The BRA first anticipated a lawsuit like Policastro’s more than 16 years ago, and was explicitly warned about discounting land for a religious organization. What’s more, previously unpublished letters show that the BRA had originally valued the land it sold to the ISB as being worth much, much more than the $401,000 it has publicly acknowledged.
Though the ISB didn’t receive initial approval from the city to build its massive mosque until late 1998, various local Muslim groups had been trying to build a mosque on the parcel in question—sandwiched between Roxbury Community College, the Roxbury Crossing T stop and the Reggie Lewis athletic complex—for well over a decade.
While these talks were still in their infancy, a 1989 BRA legal memo acknowledged that there were serious constitutional questions raised by the transfer of city land to a religious organization. According to this memo, although the city might argue that the mosque project had a secular purpose—revitalizing the Roxbury Crossing area—the transfer of city lands to a Muslim organization might also “be considered an advancement of religion,” and therefore unconstitutional.
In 1993, BRA counsel raised another legal flag. The BRA had given tentative development designation to the mosque project, and, if a lawsuit targeted the mosque, the BRA’s legal team was prepared to argue that the mosque was a proper use of the city’s urban renewal powers. In such a situation, the deal would not be
But while it was at best unwise for the BRA to seemingly ignore these cautionary memos, new details surrounding the land sale itself are downright salacious: After years of being told that the value of the ISB’s land was $401,000, the Dig discovered documents—written just months before the BRA-ISB term sheet was signed—estimating the parcel’s value at over $2 million.
In March of 2000, a high-ranking BRA official wrote two letters, on BRA stationery, regarding sale negotiations for the mosque land parcel. One of these letters went to a Menino administration official, while the other went to the president of Roxbury Community College. In both letters, the official represented the “estimated market value” of the land as being more than $2 million.
However, when the two parties signed their term sheet a few months later (in August, 2000), the BRA agreed that the value of the land it would be selling to the ISB was roughly $400,000. The value of the in-kind benefits the ISB promised the city in exchange for a discounted price (such as building an Islamic library at Roxbury Community College, running a lecture series and maintaining neighboring parks), pegged in March at $1.9 million, dropped to around $465,000, as the ISB’s cash payment jumped $71,000 to $175,000 for the parcel. Local media raised an outcry, alleging that selling city land to a religious organization at a 50 percent discount raised church-state separation questions; actually, the ISB received city land for far less than what the BRA just estimated its worth at.
To what do we owe this sudden devaluation of public land, as well as the BRA’s insistence on publicly citing the $401,000 figure? That’s anybody’s guess. The mayor’s press office referred all questions to the BRA’s spokeswoman, who failed to acknowledge repeated inquiries.
“I don’t know,” says a baffled Evan Slavitt, the lawyer representing James Policastro. “According to a [BRA] document, the property was worth $2 million, not $400,000. The more we find out, the more that appears wrong with this transaction.” |
