The South Valley Islamic Community has resubmitted plans to build a mosque, community center and cemetery in San Martin, more than three years after its previous proposal raised a stir among the rural unincorporated community’s residents.
The Santa Clara County Department of Planning and Development will host a public outreach meeting on the project, known as the Cordoba Center, 7 to 9 p.m. Feb. 25 at the Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center, 17000 Monterey Road.
The applicant, SVIC, has applied for a use permit, architecture and site approval, grading approval, cemetery permit and environmental study to establish a “religious institution” on the 15.8-acre property at the corner of Monterey Road and California Avenue, reads a notice from the county.
The institution would include two buildings—a worship hall and a community center— as well as the burial site, according to SVIC spokesman Hamdy Abbass.
The SVIC submitted almost identical plans for a worship center at the same property in 2012. Before the Board of Supervisors approved the project, numerous public hearings and informational meetings on the plans drew scores of San Martin residents opposed to the Cordoba Center.
Many of these residents said they were concerned about the project’s potential impact on groundwater, traffic, storm runoff and other environmental concerns. Some opponents of the project openly voiced their hostility to and fear of Islam and its followers.
After the supervisors approved the project 5-0 in September 2012, a group of residents calling themselves the “People’s Coalition for Government Accountability” filed a lawsuit demanding the county rescind the use permit. The suit claimed that the county did not take a full account of the Cordoba Center proposal’s potential impact on the nearby environment in accordance with state and federal laws that mandate such accountability.
The SVIC and county officials insisted the project approval followed exhaustive studies of the potential impact of the project. But the SVIC withdrew its plans in August 2013 in response to the lawsuit.
“We withdrew our plans because there was no correspondence back from the people that sued,” Abbass said. “They sued under the pretense that the county did not ask us to do the due diligence. We tried to talk to them, and there was no response.”
Abbass thinks the lawsuit was really about a group of residents “not wanting us to be there.”
Plans for the property have changed in only minor ways since the SVIC originally submitted them in 2012, except this time the proposed facilities are “maybe a little bit larger,” Abbass said.
Previous specifications called for a 5,000-square-foot prayer hall, 2,800-square-foot multi-purpose hall, a two-acre cemetery and a children’s play area.
The county notice announcing the Feb. 25 meeting says the facilities will be designed to accommodate up to 300 people for scheduled religious services with “greater anticipated capacity for occasional special events.”
The SVIC represents about 80 families from San Jose to Hollister and beyond, and the Cordoba Center project is meant to serve their prayer and worship needs. SVIC members have also said the site could be available for community use through rentals for the future community center and special events sponsored by the SVIC.
