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DuPage panel split on mosque minaret or dome

DuPage County Board members are expected to decide next week whether a future mosque near Willowbrook can have a dome and minaret, despite a previous vote that rejected those architectural features.

The issue already has divided six of them.

On Tuesday, the county board's development committee was unable to make a recommendation on Muslim Educational and Cultural Center of America's request after two votes ended in 3-3 ties.

“I am going to support MECCA because I believe it's the right thing to do,” said Rita Gonzalez, who voted with fellow board members Grant Eckhoff and Tony Michelassi. “I have not been given any testimony as to how this is injurious to the neighborhood.”

MECCA is planning to construct a roughly 47,000-square-foot mosque on almost 5 acres along 91st Street near Route 83. But last year, the county board refused to give the group permission to exceed DuPage's 36-foot height restriction in unincorporated residential neighborhoods.

At the time, MECCA needed a height variance to add a 69-foot dome and 79-foot minaret to the future mosque. Then in October, DuPage adopted a set of zoning law changes that apply to churches, mosques and other places of assembly.

One of those revisions allows religious design elements including bell towers, steeples and crosses to exceed 36 feet — to a maximum height of 72 feet — as long as certain setback requirements are met.

Now MECCA is seeking to the amend the conditional-use permit it received for the project to include a 50-foot dome and 60-foot minaret.

Abdulgany Hamadeh, MECCA's president, said legal experts have informed the group that it has a right under the county's new ordinance to request the changes. He said the dome is especially important for the group.

“It's not necessary for the operation,” Hamadeh said. “But it is a very important symbol for our religious institution to be present — just like a steeple is for a church.”

Still, neighbors oppose the changes even though MECCA moved the planned location of the dome east, away from neighboring residential parcels.

“You said ‘no' before for a very good reason,” resident Diana Cornett said to development committee members. “You decided that it (the building) needed to stay within the 36 feet that the ordinance required.”

However, Hamadeh said he doesn't believe the dome and minaret would cause any harm to the neighborhood or to the neighbors.

“It has nothing to do with traffic,” he said. “It has nothing to do with intensity of use. It has to do with how the building will look like.”

Still, board member Dirk Enger said he's visited the site and the building would be too tall for the neighborhood. Brian Krajewski and Michael Ledonne were the other two development committee members who voted against MECCA's request on Tuesday.

DuPage officials have said the height limit for residential areas was adopted in 2005. Since that time, the county hasn't allowed any variances for religious uses.

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