Trump makes play to move Islamic centre

Last Updated: Thursday, September 9, 2010 | 10:42 PM ET

The Associated Press

Donald Trump is offering to buy out one of the major investors in the real estate partnership that controls the site near Ground Zero where a Muslim group wants to build a 13-storey Islamic centre.

In a letter released Thursday by Trump's publicist, the real estate investor told Hisham Elzanaty that he would buy his stake in the lower Manhattan building for 25 per cent more than whatever he paid.

Donald Trump is offering to buy out one of the major investors in the real estate partnership that controls the site near Ground Zero where a Muslim group wants to build a 13-storey Islamic centre and mosque. (Peter Kramer/Associated Press)

"I am making this offer as a resident of New York and citizen of the United States, not because I think the location is a spectacular one [because it is not], but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse," the letter said.

Trump also attached a condition to his offer: he said that as part of the deal, the backers of the project would need to promise that the centre constructed would be at least five blocks farther away from the World Trade Center site.

The current planned location is just two blocks north of the site. Opponents argue it's insensitive to families and memories of Sept. 11 victims to build the Islamic centre so close to where Islamic extremists flew planes into the World Trade Center and killed nearly 2,800 people, while proponents support the project as a reflection of religious freedom and diversity.

It's unclear how much control Elzanaty has over the property, which is owned by an eight-member investment group led by Soho Properties.

Wolodymyr Starosolsky, who is a lawyer for Elzanaty, said Trump's offer is "just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight."

A spokesman for Soho Properties general manager Sharif El-Gamal and his nonprofit group, Park51, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

El-Gamal and other people associated with the Islamic centre have refused to detail the ownership structure of the real estate partnership that holds the site.

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