It would move into three units in Route 206 shopping center
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Representatives of the Muslim Center of Somerset County will seek planning approval next Wednesday to locate a house of worship in part of a strip shopping center off Route 206 in the northern part of the township.
The center is proposing to convert 4,244 square feet in three units of the Worden and Green shopping center into a faith-based educational/religious facility. Houses of worship are not permitted in the neighborhood shopping district without a zoning use variance.
The mosque would be the center of prayer and educational activities, including a Sunday school of 15 to 20 children ages 5 to 15. The Sunday school would be secondary to the principal use as a worship site.
In June, the Zoning Board of Adjustment carried the application until July 17 at 7:30 in the municipal complex.
The one-story shopping center is adjacent to the former Kmart store. The I-Hop restaurant sits behind the storefronts, and to the west is the Banor Park development of single-family homes.
No changes to the exterior of the building are proposed, and signs will meet local ordinances. Development regulations say there must be one off-street parking space for each three seats of a church so center representatives must testify on the number of worshippers because there won’t be seats or pews, noted the engineer’s report.
Daily prayer would be held at various hours. Members attend daily prayer as the demands of their lives allow and are attended by a smaller number of people than the weekly Friday prayer service, according to the application.
The center will not use any church bells or other sound-generating devices, attorney Arthur Skaar, of Hillsborough, wrote in a narrative attached to the application. It won’t broadcast any recorded or live music, voices and sounds outside the building, he wrote.
The application said it’s anticipated members mostly will use a currently underutilized 75-space parking lot to the back.
A Friday prayer service will be held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. Sunday school will run from 9:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. from September to June. The center’s Sunday school is currently operated at the Eisenhower Intermediate School in Bridgewater.
Holiday nightly prayers are anticipated from 8 to 10 p.m. for the 30 days of Ramadan. This year, Ramadan falls from July 8 to Aug. 7, but varies because it is based on the lunar calendar.
Muslim Center of Somerset County is a 20-year old independent nonprofit religious institution serving the Muslim community in Hillsborough and adjoining area. The center is community based and depends on its members for financial and volunteer support.
The nearest mosques are on Livingston Avenue in New Brunswick, Route 1 in South Brunswick and on Hoes Lane in Piscataway. The center currently uses the Manville-Hillsborough Elks lodge for weekly Friday prayer services.
Mr. Skaar’s statement said the center had a “proud record of involvement in the community life of Hillsborough Township.” For the last four years, it has participated in the township Veterans Day event, and it has joined the Memorial Day ceremony. It has established scholarships at Raritan Valley Community College and done community volunteer work.
In 2011, MCSC member Nauman Chaudary, a Hillsborough resident and a Marine from 1998 to 2006, was asked to deliver a speech at the township’s Veterans Day ceremonies.
The application suggests the center would bring vitality to a shopping area notable for the vacant 63,500-square-foot Kmart. Use of spaces in the adjacent building for a quiet use can “serve to lessen any perception of blight, which vacant stores can tend to create,” Mr. Skaar wrote.