Official Mosque Plans Likely to be Heard in Spring

After hearing many suggestions and questions last month from both Planning Board members and the public, work continues on an application for a proposed Islamic mosque in Liberty Corner, with plans likely to be filed by the spring, according to Ali Chaudry, president of the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge.

Chaudry, also a former township mayor, in January appeared in before neighbors and the Bernards Township Planning Board to informally present plans to convert a four-bedroom home at 124 Church St. in Liberty Corner into an Islamic center.

Chaudry said the Islamic Society already owns the house, approximately across the street from the Liberty Corner firehouse. He and other professionals who presented the plan said the society had previously reached out to neighbors, the Liberty Corner Fire Co. and First Aid Squad and others in seeking input before establishing a mosque to serve families from nearby in The Hills in other sections of Bernards Township and other sections fo the Somerset Hills.

Chaudry said then he would like to return before the board with a complete and detailed site plan application within a schedule for the center to open some time this year.

"We are working on it...we will be back soon," Chaudry said last week. He said the planners, including local architect and historian Dan Lincoln, are working on all aspects of the plan, considering input received during the information hearing.

"We are taking everything into account," in preparing the details of the application, he said this week. He said he expects the application will be filed with the Planning Board this spring, but declined to give additional details at this time. The application is not on the agenda for Tuesday's Planning Board meeting.

Chaudry reaffirmed that the application to be filed before the Planning Board will recognize the mosque's setting within the neighborhood with many historic houses. 

How the building would fit within the neighborhood, as well as issues about traffic, were some of the concerns raised at the January presentation.

"We got a lot of information from the board" and neighbors, Chaudry said last week.

"Traditional mosques look many different ways...reflecting local cultures," Chaudry said last month. He said the proposal is to create a center that would fit into the neighborhood of older homes, some historic, in Liberty Corner village.

The drawings as presented last month showed a freestanding 45-foot-high "minaret," a type of pole-like steeple that is standard on mosque. However, Chaudry and the other professionals at the meeting said the minaret could possibly be built into a new addition that would eventually be proposed for the building, and it might also be reduced in height.

Initially, daily prayers for adults and a Sunday school for about 25 children would be held in the large living room combined with other space in what had been built as a private home, apparently in the 1950s. It now is about 5,000 square feet on about 4.3 acres at the edge of Liberty Corner village.

A maximum of 50 to 65 worshippers attend prayers on Friday afternoon between 1 to 2 p.m., Chaudry said. The longer-term plans for the mosque would be to accommodate participation by up to 100 people, he said.

Currently, Chaudry said members of the Islamic Center rent space from the Bernards Township Community Center for worship, and lease about five classrooms at the Somerset Hills YMCA to operate a Sunday school.

But the eventual plan is eventually to add a prayer hall measuring about 33 by 48 feet in size, according to the presentation.

Architect for the project is Dan Lincoln, a Bernardsville-based architect and president of the Historical Society of the Somerset Hills. Lincoln said the eventual addition would have an exterior of stucco and cultured stone, and would have a dome on top.