Mosque Minarets Prompt Stop-Work Order

Prayers can legally soar as high as congregants send them when a new mosque is completed at 531 Middletown Ave. But the two white minarets outside may legally reach only 57 feet up.

So the city has put a temporarily halt to the construction of the mosque.

The Turkish-American Religious Foundation, a Turkish government-connected organization that has built mosque in partnership with local Turkish-American communities across the country, is the legal owner of 531 Middletown.

The unfinished mosque sits recessed and set at the back of an unfinished parking area at Gando Drive across from an industrial park.

The structure is in a mixed residential neighborhood backing onto Weybosset Street in the northeastern part of the city, where approval was given in late 2015 for the mosque to be built, but with minarets to be built so they rise no higher than 57 feet.

The problem is that the minarets installed since then reach up 81 feet.

“We’ve got a stamped plan, height 57 feet,” said the city’s chief building official, Jim Turcio. ​“They have to remove 24 feet on each of them,” he said.

The city’s building department has ordered that construction, including work on the 12,000 square-foot main structure, stop until the minarets get smaller.

The question is: How do you make a minaret smaller?

It’s complicated not only because it involves potentially religious requirements — the minaret must be taller than the dome on the mosque — but also because the property is owned by an affiliate of the Turkish government.

Those issues were mentioned briefly on Tuesday night at the Quinnipiac East Community Management Team meeting during a report by Alder Gerald Antunes. Antunes summarized the findings of a drive-through the ward, including along Middletown Avenue, with Turcio pointing out some of the area’s more glaring violations, including the minarets.

Antunes suggested that since this is a religious building, if the builders had exceeded the legal height by a little, by a few feet, neighbors would not have made an issue of it. But this was more than a little.

How did it go wrong?

“Those [minarets] came in from Turkey, and they put them up,” Turcio said.

Heydar Elevulu, the president of the congregation, said that he does not dispute the minarets have exceeded the legal height. He definitely wants to solve the problem, he said, and not dispute with the city and not go to court. But, he said, ​“it’s difficult because things take time and the Turkish government is involved.”

He called his situation as a go-between among the congregation, the city, and the Turkish government a ​“headache.”

Not only the minarets but also the dome atop the main were all sent to New Haven from Turkey, he said.

The group has been working on the mosque since 2010, when it purchased the building, having used a private house further up on Middletown Avenue for prayers from 1992 until 2009.

Evelulu, who runs a restaurant in Wallingford, said most of the congregation’s 150 members hail from the city of Giresun in Turkey on the Black Sea. The congregation has been growing, hence the reason for constructing a larger new mosque.

He and the local community raised about $150,000 to do the first floor renovations. Then the foundation, an arm of the Turkish government, has stepped in to provide the dome, minarets, and funding for renovations of the second and third floor.

An imam sent from Turkey, Muhammet Efe, lives with his family in a heated apartment on the second floor. He conducts services on the first floor on Fridays and teaches classes for the kids, in Turkish, on the weekend.The upper floors continue to be unfinished and have leaks and other issues to contend with.

Stops & Starts

After several plans were submitted and revised, in December 2015 the City Plan Commission approved the compromise plan.

Evelulu said it is his understanding that the allowable height is 65 or 66 feet. Turcio disagreed. He referenced a stamped and signed plan dating from late 2015 or early 2016 stating the height limit for the minarets is 57 feet.

Evelulu said he has no wish to dispute with the city, nor does the Turkish government, whose officials occasionally visit.

Evelulu is having a survey done of both the minarets and the dome to see if some workable plan can be submitted to the city. He has also retained Andy Rizzo, the retired former head of the building department, to run interference with him and the buildings department.

Elevulu said Rizzo was head of the buildings department when the original permit for the mosque was granted.

No work has been done on the building since the summer, said Evelulu.

On Feb. 12, 2016, the foundation and its principal applicant, Elevulu, pulled a building permit to build only the foundation of the minarets and the entryway, according to city records.

Then up went the minarets.

Evelulu blamed the situation in part on reassurances from architects that the minarets would meet height requirements. (The architect couldn’t be reached for comment.)

A Sept. 16 order stopped the work until the following documentation had been submitted to the Building Department: ​“proof of special inspections, drawings reflecting changes to the roof and other details of the structure; and roofing work, which is not allowed until all issues have been presented.”

“Construction has continued without filed drawings in and unsupervised manner,” the order read.

Less than two months later another Stop Work order was issued because the work had ​“exceeded the allowable height allowance,” the order read. Because the paperwork was then out of compliance for the approved construction, “[a]ll work related to the currently issued building permits must cease until corrections have been completed to the satisfaction of this office.”

Elevulu said he’d like first to address problems in the building and deal with the height issue of the minarets as a separate issue.

Elevulu said he has been asking Turcio if the congregation can finish the building, and deal with the minarets separately, but Turcio was adamant.

“No work of any kind” will be allowed until the minaret height is cut down, Turcio emphasized.

Take down 24 feet of each minaret. That’s the only new work that’s going to be allowed.

When a building rises to over 60 feet, you need a third party review for safety, he added. There’s no negotiating the situation now.

Elevulu said he’s having an engineer and a surveyor look at the building in the coming week. One of the requirements of the mosque construction is that the minarets be higher than the mosque’s dome, he said.

However, if the building height can be raised, he suggested. perhaps the number of feet the minaret needs to be reduced can be minimized.

And there’s something else.

“To take it down will touch the religion,” he said. That’s why he needs to talk to the city to find another way. ​“It’s not the money, it’s a religious sentiment,” he said.

He has brought the matter up several times with Mayor Toni Harp. In the aftermath of the recent attack on the mosque in Quebec, Elevulu met with the mayor’s staff, and the city provided police protection for the mosque. In the course of that meeting, he reiterated the need to find a solution to the building problem.

They even broached the idea of Giresun becoming another of New Haven’s sister cities, he said.

Elevulu said Connecticut has about 8,000 Turkish-Americans, with the greatest concentration in the Greater New Haven area. There are also 260 Turkish-owned businesses, he said, one of which is his own, Rick’s On 5, in Wallingford.