The growing Muslim community in Prince George, B.C., currently uses the basement of a church for their prayer services. (CBC)

Officials in Prince George, B.C., are pinning their hopes on the construction of the region's first mosque to help attract Muslim professionals and their families to the city.

Mayor Dan Rogers said he jumped at the chance to help the small Muslim community buy land for a mosque six years ago.

City council voted in 2004 to rezone and sell a city-owned site to the mosque developers in a lease-to-own deal that eliminated the need for a down payment.

The $1.8 million mosque project is part of the city's plan to re-invent itself as an education and medical services hub given that the area's main industry, forestry, is no longer viable.

"When we look to recruit professionals … to work at the new cancer centre that's being built [or] when we look to recruit people who will take up the research challenge at our university … this is a wise investment for us," said Rogers.

The community's Muslims will keep using the basement of the Knox United Church for prayers until the city's new mosque is completed this summer.

The mosque development required several years of fundraising by a small group of people, including Ibrahim Karido, who started drumming up support by first identifying the Muslims in the community using some crude methods.

"I went through the telephone books, trying to see names which sounded a bit more Muslim," he said.

Community growing

Karido arrived in Prince George, 600 kilometres north of Vancouver, in 1993 and soon learned that many Muslims had tried out the city as a place to settle but never stayed long.

"What people tell us they are looking for is not money … not anything else material. What is missing for them and their family is their spiritual need," said Karido.

He estimates the community has grown from 30 families a few years ago to 200 hundred families. An artist's rendering shows Prince George's new mosque, expected to be completed this summer. (CBC)

Iram Chaudrhy and her husband Tahir are both pediatricians who came to Prince George to work at a local hospital. The advent of the new mosque — and what it will provide — has helped keep them in the city.

"A mosque is not just a place where we can get together as a community; it's where we welcome other communities," Chaudhry said.

Ridha Aktar, 15, who just moved with her parents to Prince George from South Africa, said the new building will make a big difference for her family.

"It's like a dream come true for us to have a mosque here," she said. "It makes the place better, and it's more welcoming to have a mosque here."