Trump’s offer is “just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight,” said Sharif El-Gamal, chief executive officer of Soho Properties LLC, who signed the deed to purchase the property in July 2009. He commented in an e-mail statement.
As part of the bid, any community center built would be located at least five blocks farther from the World Trade Center site, Trump said. The offer was made in a letter dated today and included in a statement received by e-mail.
“I am making this offer as a resident of New York and citizen of the United States, not because I think the location is a spectacular one (because it is not), but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation,” Trump wrote in the letter to Hisham Elzanaty, a businessman who’s said he provided the majority of the financing for the two buildings where the center would be built.
Trump, founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. and host of the NBC television series “The Apprentice,” didn’t return a telephone call and e-mail seeking further comment.
The proposed Islamic center is two blocks north of where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Book Burning
Trump’s offer was made public shortly before Terry Jones, a pastor from Gainesville, Florida, announced he was canceling plans to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11. He said the Islamic center’s developers agreed to discuss moving to a different location.
El-Gamal said there is no deal to relocate the center.
“It is untrue that the community center known as Park51 in lower Manhattan is being moved,” he said in his e-mail. “The project will proceed as planned.”More BW
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