Attorney Questions Mosque Application at Planning Board

An attorney representing residents opposed to the opening of the Borough's first mosque challenged the testimony supporting the mosque on Thursday.

Robert Inglima Jr., an attorney representing  Mitchel Associates, cross-examined Alexander Lapatka, an engineer, and  Charles Olivo, a traffic consultant. Lapatka and Olivo in support of an application to turn the first floor of the Arthur B. Fowler Building at 28 Farview Terrace into the Borough's first mosque.

Inglima said he found that many of the spaces in the parking lot were irregularly sized and poorly placed.

Lapatka, whose offices were once located in the same building, argued that the problems with the lot were manageable, and that in any case, they had existed long before the mosque application.

"I've pulled [into the parking spaces] a couple thousand times and never had a problem," Lapatka said.

Olivo presented a report that showed that there was enough parking at the proposed mosque site and enough capacity on the nearby roads for the extra traffic that the mosque might generate. Parking is at the crux of the application.

The Borough code requires 66 spaces based on the size and proposed use of the building. There are 32 at the site, though the El-Zahra Foundation, which hopes to turn the building into a mosque, has an agreement with the nearby Veterans of Foreign Wars Post to use 25 of their parking spaces.

Inglima challenged Olivo's methods in compiling his report, and questioned why Olivo didn't include the parking requirements of the second-floor tenants of the Fowler building.

The application will be carried to the March 31 meeting of the Planning Board. At that meeting, Inglima will cross-examine planner Kathryn Gregory and present a witness of his own.