After more than a year, Santa Clara County planners are almost complete with the Environmental Impact Report for the Cordoba Center mosque and community center project in San Martin.
Proposed by the South Valley Islamic Community, the project will eventually be built on a 16-acre undeveloped parcel near the intersection of Monterey Road and California Avenue. The proposal consists of a two-story, 9,000-square-foot mosque; a two-story, 14,500-square-foot multipurpose building; a four-acre Islamic cemetery; a one-third-acre campground; and additional support and ancillary structures, according to plans submitted to county officials.
Planners began the environmental study of the project, which is designed to accommodate up to 300 people at a time, in January 2017. Santa Clara County Planning Manager Rob Eastwood said Tuesday that the initial draft of the EIR is slated to be complete by “mid- to late-May.” After that will follow a minimum two-month public review period “for folks to read the EIR and provide comments.”
Planners will conduct at least one public meeting on the Cordoba Center EIR in San Martin, and county staff will spend several weeks responding to each comment on the EIR submitted by the public, Eastwood explained.
After that, the project will be filtered through the San Martin Advisory Committee and the county planning commission before the board of supervisors takes a vote on the Cordoba Center’s site plan, Eastwood added. He estimated the public hearings before those bodies could begin in fall of 2018.
The Cordoba Center has generated ongoing skepticism from South County residents who fear the project will be significantly larger than typical existing commercial or religious uses in the rural, unincorporated town of San Martin.
Eastwood noted that the top three concerns that San Martin residents have identified about the project are the potential impact of the cemetery on the groundwater, increased vehicle traffic associated with the site and the visual impact. The EIR will offer a detailed analysis of these and other potential impacts of the Cordoba Center on the surrounding community.
At previous public hearings on the Cordoba Center project—which was first proposed in 2012—some residents expressed more hateful concerns related to the SVIC members’ religion, culture and beliefs. County planners have told the residents that the county cannot legally reject a project based on the religion of those who proposed it.
The SVIC includes about 400 residents of South County. These families currently attend prayer services in a barn in San Martin.
SVIC spokesman Hamdy Abbass said the SVIC remains committed to developing the new Cordoba Center as a modern central religious and cultural center for the local Muslim population. On occasion, they also plan to open up the Cordoba Center to the surrounding community for events.
Family fights intolerance
The SVIC and the Cordoba Center proposal gained national publicity last week when NPR and National Geographic published a lengthy story about the discrimination faced by local Muslim families. The story featured a teen in Gilroy who has been bullied in class because of her religion, and her efforts to use education to eliminate such ignorance.
The teen’s mother, Noshaba Afzal, told the Times recently that one of the initial town hall meetings on the Cordoba Center—which drew hundreds of residents—“felt like we were living in the 1600s in the deep south” due to the procession of prejudicial comments submitted by attendees opposed to the SVIC.
While the effort to build the Cordoba Center continues, Afzal and her daughter—who the Times is declining to name at her mother’s request—have made ample progress toward creating a more comfortable environment in the Gilroy school.
The teen and her family have worked with Gilroy Unified School District to eliminate culturally insensitive classroom lessons and encourage more education of different cultures. The Christopher High School sophomore’s academic experience has thus improved since she spoke to National Geographic more than a year ago.
“At this point of time, it’s old news,” said Afzal, who hopes the bullying behavior does not return with the recent publicity.
Reporter Scott Forstner contributed to this story.
