Large Mosque, Muslim Community Center Proposed On Ernston Road In Sayreville

SAYREVILLE, NJ — Next Wednesday, April 16 the Sayreville Planning Board will hear a revised proposal to tear down a small existing mosque on Ernston Road and replace it with a much larger, 42,687-square-foot Muslim community center.

A mosque called Masjid Sadar ("masjid" is the Arabic word for mosque) is currently located at 216 Ernston Road in Sayreville, in a small, two-story brown clapboard house. The Islamic religious group seeks to tear down the house and rebuild a much bigger mosque and Muslim community center there.

The new mosque will take up three lots: 212, 214 and 216 Ernston Road. The owner of those lots is a man named Mohamed Shameer Sadar, under his company Shameer Properties LLC, based in Newark.

Residents in Sayreville and Old Bridge have been voicing concerns against the mosque for the past several years, including that it is too big, will be built in a residential area and will bring in too much traffic. In 2022, the town of Sayreville sued Sadar/Shameer Properties, alleging they failed to obtain various construction permits, failed to obtain a compliance certificate from the borough and that they illegally continued construction on the property despite a stop-work order from the town.

The town's lawsuit against the mosque was dismissed in February in Middlesex County Superior Court, the Home News reported, but the court also ruled any work on the mosque could not proceed until a revised hearing was held.

Since then, Shameer Properties has reduced the size of the proposed mosque by about 2,000 square feet.

It will still be a very large, three-story building: According to these new renderings Masjid Sadar submitted to the Sayreville Planning Board this month, the new mosque and community center will be three floors and have a large parking area in front. The mosque will be open daily for religious services, children's education and men's and women's educational services and events. The new mosque will have an indoor prayer hall, an indoor basketball court and a separate prayer hall for women. It will also house an Islamic school on site.

The Sayreville Planning Board moved its meeting next Wednesday to the Sayreville Active Adult Center to accommodate the larger crowd that is expected. It will be held at 7:30 p.m. April 16 at 423 Main Street in Sayreville. Here is how to watch the meeting virtually over Zoom (click "Online info"), and here are all the latest renderings and architectural plans the mosque had to submit to the Township.

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