Mosque at 51 Park Place, NY, NY

[Lamplighter]

Here's another view of Sharif el-Gamal link
He doesn't seem quite so sinister in this view.

(bold and quote formats are mine for readability)

He comes from the well-off family of a bank executive, but not from real estate billions.
His father, an Egyptian, was a managing director at Chemical Bank.
His parents divorced; he lived in Brooklyn until age 9, when his mother, a Polish Catholic, died.
He then followed his father to Liberia and to Egypt, where he attended the The Shultz American School:
(The Schutz American School founded in 1924, was originally a boarding school for children of missionaries)

Mr. Gamal returned to the United States for college, studying architecture and economics before dropping out.
He was not raised in a religious household, but Islam helped Mr. Gamal out of a troubled youth, Mr. Kopp said.
After a stint waiting tables, Mr. Gamal entered the close-knit New York real estate world, where he is better known as a broker than as a developer.

Sharif el-Gamal is a relative newcomer to the New York City real estate business.
He got his broker’s license in 2002.
He is developing two condominium projects:
turning a building in TriBeCa into six lofts, and
planning apartments on what is now a West Side parking lot.

He began buying buildings three years ago.
As an owner and developer, though, he is just getting started, by New York standards.
Public filings show Mr. Gamal bought, starting in 2007, a half-dozen apartment buildings
in Harlem and Washington Heights for $1.075 million to $2.8 million.Two have outstanding building violations and owe the city money.
He also manages properties in Chelsea and Harlem. He bought his first major office building, 31 West 27th Street, in 2009, for $45.7 million.

Mr. Gamal attended two Lower Manhattan mosques that were overflowing, and decided to build a mosque and community center, a Muslim version of the J.C.C.
In July 2009, Mr. Gamal paid $4.85 million, a bargain price, for the property on Park Place, two blocks from ground zero.

Mr. Gamal has told supporters that he will take no money linked to “un-American” values and that donations will be vetted by federal and state authorities and separate boards for the center and the mosque.
Comparable projects like the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan, on the Upper West Side — Mr. Gamal is a member; his daughters learned to swim there — have planned their programming before financing the construction, to show they will have revenue from, say, gym memberships or day care.
Mr. Gamal hopes to raise $70 million through tax-exempt bonds, which religiously affiliated nonprofit groups can obtain — but only if they prove that the facilities will benefit the general public, with religious functions separately financed.