Islip hearing on proposed Muslim school for boys brings out overflow crowd of opponents

An overflow crowd of about 600 people packed an Islip Town meeting hall Tuesday evening to protest a planned boarding school for Muslim boys in Bay Shore.

The crowd filled all 500 seats in the auditorium at Islip Town Hall West, with another 100 lined up outside unable to enter the Islip Town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting.

The 13-acre property at issue on Saxon Avenue was sold by the Roman Catholic Montfort Missionaries in June for $5 million to a Muslim group based partly out of the Suleymaniye mosque in Dix Hills.

"It’s going to disrupt the character of the neighborhood. It doesn’t fit in," Pat Montanino, 70, of East Islip, told Newsday as she waited in the hallway to try to get into the packed auditorium.

Opponents also said the school would increase traffic in the vicinity.

The Montforts founded the facility in 1926 as a minor seminary where teenage boys considering the priesthood lived and studied. The seminary closed in 1972 and had, in recent decades, served as a retreat house and a headquarters for the Montfort order.

A lawyer representing the group that plans to open the boarding school for Muslim boys rejected residents’ concerns and said the property has the proper zoning. Besides, said attorney Samuel L. Bifulco, the existing building had operated as a boarding school for decades.

Bifulco said the school, for grades 7 through 12, would house a maximum of 120 students and 20 staff members, including teachers. Another 10 teachers would commute, meaning a minimum of traffic, he said.

Students "will participate in a structured educational environment that includes secular academic instruction, religious studies and recreational programming," he told the Board of Appeals.

Bifulco said zoning laws permit a church, mosque or synagogue at the site that can accommodate 1,300 people at a time. The school would involve far fewer people, he said, calling the boarding school the most “responsible” use of the property.

He also said there will be no weddings or catered events at the facility. 

Some appeals board members strongly questioned Bifulco about how the project went through without a full public hearing.

Steven Bertolino, an attorney representing residents, argued to the board that the new project should be rejected in part because town laws don’t allow a dormitory on the property.

The Montforts said they sold the property because they could no longer afford to keep it as the number of their members dwindled.

Previously, the order had an offer from Sunrise Senior Living to buy the property and construct an assisted living facility there, the Rev. Thomas Poth, provincial of the Montforts in the United States, told Newsday.
Residents opposed the plan and the Islip Town Zoning Board ultimately rejected Sunrise’s application for a zoning change.

The battle went on for eight years, Poth said Tuesday.

"We had eight years to try to sell it and the town refused" to allow the Montforts "to sell it to Sunrise Senior," he said.