Below is City Manager Bill Lindsay’s response to the many rumors that are being spread about the former Kaiser Field Hospital on Cutting, currently being used as a regional community venter and mosque by the Islamic community:
Mayor and Members of the City Council:
This is to provide an update concerning the building safety concerns at the mosque located on Cutting Boulevard (the former Kaiser Hospital building).
As has been widely reported, the City has concerns about the condition of the building and its ability to provide a safe gathering place for members of the Islamic prayer community. As described in more detail below, we have now established a sound communication link with leaders in that community and progress is being made to eventually allow them to operate safely.
A meeting has been scheduled for this Monday which includes the secretary of the board for the mosque, and their engineer and contractor; from the City, the meeting will include a senior building inspector, plan check engineer, fire marshal and code enforcement attorney. (The City’s code enforcement attorney has worked with their legal counsel in a collegial manner to develop this path forward, so the presence of any legal counsel will be advisory rather than adversarial.) The meeting is with the understanding that the building will have to stay empty until such time as their engineers can present an acceptable plan to “isolate” the prayer area of the mosque from the rest of the building and abate all life-safety problems (including fire code issues) that affect that area. If they can present such an acceptable plan, that meets minimum state standards, then they can proceed with the necessary work to permit that portion to be reoccupied.
Staff believes that that the leaders and technical experts from the mosque have a good understanding of the issues; they have shown an interest in working cooperatively to accomplish what needs to be done to, hopefully, make the building safe enough to allow their membership back in to a least part of the structure. All parties understand that is not something that can happen overnight, but city staff understands that we need to expedite this process.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need any additional information.
Bill Lindsay
Bill Lindsay
City Manager
City of Richmond
450 Civic Center Plaza
Richmond, California 94804
(510) 620-6512
Bill_lindsay@ci.richmond.ca.us
Richmond mosque housed in former World War II Kaiser hospital is unsafe, city officials say
By Robert Rogers
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 01/10/2014 06:26:58 AM PST
Updated: 01/10/2014 08:28:08 AM PST
A Cutting Boulevard mosque, which is the target of code violation attention from the City of...
RICHMOND -- City inspectors say a mosque housed in a World War II-era former Kaiser field hospital is beset by hazardous safety conditions and building code violations and should be evacuated.
The move to force the mosque out of the building has drawn criticism from at least one Bay Area Islamic leader who claims religious freedoms are being imperiled, as well as two City Council members.
Masjid Noor, located at 1330 Cutting Blvd., has "serious structural integrity problems and potentially dangerous conditions" that were revealed during a late-December inspection by fire officials, said city prosecutor Trisha Aljoe.
A Cutting Boulevard mosque, which is the target of code violation attention from the City of Richmond, is photographed in Richmond, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)
"There were extreme life safety fire violations observed, and then the building officials cited dozens more code violations," Aljoe said. "Floors and ceilings are collapsing in there, and extensive work is being done that needs a structural engineer."
Aljoe added that raw sewage was present outside, along with mattresses and other evidence that people may be living in the structure.
But some have balked at the assessment, and vow to fight back if the city tries to force the mosque to vacate the structure.
"I recently heard that the city of Richmond might be having talks to shut down the Islamic Center," said Saadi Nasim, a community outreach coordinator at Al Sabeel mosque in San Francisco, in a Tuesday email to the City Council and Mayor Gayle McLaughlin. "First and foremost, freedom of religion is guaranteed by our constitution. I am confused how and why a religious (center) could be shut down."
Several men at the mosque, which is surrounded by an iron gate, answered the door Thursday. A red city placard dated Jan. 9 ordering the cessation of all work was posted by the door. The men declined to comment, saying the matter was being discussed by mosque leaders and their legal advisers.
The mosque is housed in a former Kaiser field hospital, first built for shipyard workers and their families in the 1940s, and is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The building was sold to the mosque by Kaiser in the late 1990s, said Councilman Tom Butt.
The National Park Service, which operates the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park, established in 2000, has expressed interest in buying the building from the mosque but was turned down, Butt said.
Council members Nat Bates and Corky Boozé have expressed concern with the way the city has handled the situation.
"Being punitive toward a religious group without just cause is asking for nothing but problems with perhaps national negative publicity," Bates said in an email this week to his council colleagues, adding that he is not abreast of all the facts of the case. "This mosque has been in operation for years without controversy, and there better be some strong reasons in suggesting the city shut them down."
Boozé, who has been the subject of numerous investigations by city Code Enforcement officials over his own allegedly substandard properties, said the matter was evidence that the Code Enforcement Department and Aljoe are "out of control."
"I visited the building this week, and to say it's dangerous is a bunch of hogwash," Boozé said. "The roof was leaking, there is some rot on the floors, but that is a huge building and the part they pray in has no problems."
Boozé said he will put the issue on the City Council's Tuesday agenda to gather more information.
Aljoe said the inspection was initiated by fire and building officials and city officials are working on a notice to abate, repair and vacate, which could come as early as next week. Mosque members told site inspectors they won't leave, Aljoe said, portending a possible legal showdown.
"They are entitled to an appeals process," Aljoe said. "We don't discriminate, but it's our duty to address dangerous buildings."
Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726. Follow him at Twitter.com/SFBaynewsrogers.
Want to receive TOM BUTT E-FORUM and other action alerts on Richmond political and community issues delivered to your email address? Email your name and email address and/or the names and email addresses of others who would like to be placed on the mailing list and the message "subscribe" to tom.butt@intres.com. Comments, arguments and corrections are welcome. Tom Butt is a member of the Richmond City Council when opinions and views expressed, without other attribution, in TOM BUTT E-FORUM, they are those of Tom Butt and do not reflect official views or positions of the City of Richmond or the Richmond City Council unless otherwise noted. Visit the Tom Butt website for additional information about Tom Butt's activities on the Richmond City Council: http://www.tombutt.com. Phone 510/236-7435 or 510/237-2084. Subscription to this service is at the personal discretion of the recipient and may be terminated by responding with “unsubscribe.” It may take a few days to remove addresses from the distribution list.
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
To the extent that content is excerpted under the fair use doctrine from other media, I urge readers to subscribe to the print versions of these media with print versions to help support professional journalism and the businesses that publish news, and I urge readers to log in to the online versions to access additional content, related content and unrelated news as well as the advertisements that support the media. I especially appreciate local sources of news that include the Contra Costa Times , the San Francisco Chronicle, Richmond Confidential and the East Bay Express.
|
