Representatives of Riverhead Islamic Center met with the Riverhead Planning Board this afternoon to discuss plans for a Harrison Avenue property the group purchased in 2014.
Dr. Mahmood Afghani, a physician who works for Peconic Bay Medical Center, Atif Bashir, who owns an auto repair shop on West Main Street and Dr. Mohammad Iqbal, the Queens dentist who signed the site plan application as president of the organization met with planners to answer questions and hear feedback on plans to convert an existing single-family home to a house of worship, with a second-story apartment. The apartment would be occupied by the imam, or preacher, they said.
A public hearing on the proposed new location for the Riverhead mosque won’t take place until August at the earliest because the group’s architect, who was not present today, told planner Karen Gluth he would not be able to submit revised plans prior to the hearing being noticed.
The Riverhead mosque has been operating out of a small storefront on Railroad Avenue for the last six years, Afghani told the planning board.
Most days, only a couple of people use the space for daily prayers, which Muslims are obligated to pray five times each day.
“People are working and don’t have time to come to the center to say prayers,” Bashir said.
But on Fridays, the Muslim weekly holy day, 25 to 30 people typically come together for afternoon prayers, Afghani said. The storefront they currently rent is quite small.
Iqbal explained that the exact prayer times vary with the lunar calendar and the position of the sun. The prayers take 10 or 15 minutes and people come and leave quickly.
Their center is “a house of worship just like a church or synagogue,” Iqbal said. There would be no special events held there and no outside music or speaking.
“There is no political talk or anything like that” at the mosque, Iqbal said. He said he is in regular contact with a Suffolk County police detective — every month or every second month — “to ask how things are going in the community.”
It’s a small community in Riverhead, “maybe 40 or 50 houses,” Afghani said. It is currently the only mosque on the East End, the imam of Suffolk County’s oldest and largest mosque told RiverheadLOCAL on Monday.
A house of worship is a permitted use in all zoning use districts in the town. The site itself will require a front yard setback variance and a variance for the percentage of impervious surfaces, so the applicant will have to go to the Zoning Board of Appeals, Gluth told planning board members.
As far as the site plan is concerned, planners are looking at issues like the number of parking spaces provided and the access points on Harrison Avenue.
Planning board chairman Stan Carey said he wants to make sure that traffic in and out of the site wouldn’t interfere with school buses coming out of the nearby high school at dismissal time.
Iqbal said the center’s architect would be submitting revised plans to the town planning department.
The three men were unwilling to be interviewed after the meeting. They swiftly exited Town Hall, with Bashir saying they couldn’t speak.
“We are in a hurry right now,” Bashir said, as the trio offered handshakes and got into their parked car.
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