"If someone wants to give me 18 or 20 million dollars today, it's all theirs."

[aquart]

He paid $4.8 million. He says he looked on the project as a business investment which required raising "100 million dollars and millions more to run it." And, if you buy it from him for 4x what he paid, he still sees being able to donate the land to a Muslim organization to build a small mosque on the site. Without, I assume, the swimming pool and cooking school.

And nobody else but me thinks this crapfest was a scam from the getgo?

Religious freedom was never the issue. It was the hook.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/09/09/us_nyc_mosque_imam/index.html

Oh, look! Now it has a performing arts center and a theater! What doesn't this wonderful building possess?

[uppityperson]

1. Oh, I imagine the other 5 or so Duers will show up. You missed this sentence...

If they don't raise enough money to build the Community Center, it won't be built and he will sell to someone else. And this is....the hook?

"A spokesman for the developer leading the investment team declined to confirm Elzanaty's claim that he has a majority stake in the partnership, or comment on whether he needs approval from the rest of the group to decide the fate of the two buildings."