Hmm: Ground Zero Mosque Building Was on Market for $18 Million, Sold for $4.5 Million

It's a shame we have an absentee New York Attorney General (he's busy running for Governor), otherwise he might be inclined to look at all this shady business. We long ago gave up on the U.S. Attorney General. He's busy waging war on Arizona to even bother investigating any of these slippery operators. Let's face it though: Even in a down economy, how does a building on the market for 18 million wind up being sold for a fraction of that?

The original owners of the Ground Zero mosque site mysteriously spurned dozens of higher bids before selling the prime downtown real estate at a bargain-basement price.

The Pomerantz family, which had owned the building since the late 1960s and fielded offers after the patriarch died in 2006, rejected at least one bid that was nearly four times what prospective mosque builder Sharif El-Gamal eventually paid, The Post has learned.

El-Gamal did offer what could be viewed as a sweetener to his $4.8 million bid in July 2009 -- a job as a property manager for a son of the family, Sethian Pomerantz.

New York developer Kevin Glodek was livid when he found out the building sold for a fraction of what he offered in 2007 -- $18 million cash -- and wondered whether money changed hands under the table, according to sources close to the deal.

Glodek and his partners wanted to build a 60-story condo tower with retail space on the Park Place site, had inked a purchase agreement and even had keys to the existing building, according to sources and documents obtained by The Post.

But Kukiko Mitani -- whose late husband, Stephen Pomerantz, owned the property -- and her brother-in-law, Melvin Pomerantz, a trustee to the estate, went silent at the end of 2007 and Glodek's deal disappeared, sources said.

Glodek, who owns the ChefsDiet food delivery service and several Manhattan properties, declined to comment.

The property is now at the heart of one of the most divisive issues in the country -- whether it should be the location of a $100 million mosque and community center. The location two blocks from Ground Zero has been called insensitive, and questions have been raised about whether extremists will help fund the project. Recent polls show that 70 percent of New Yorkers want it moved.

El-Gamal had his eye on the property for years before buying it in 2009.

He was not alone in his interest, with some 30 offers showered on the Pomerantz family in what was an overheated downtown real-estate market in 2007, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Yet Mitani previously told The Post the building, a former Burlington Coat Factory store that was damaged in the 9/11 attacks, was a tough sell. She said she was in debt and desperate to unload it after her husband's death and insisted she had no buyers other than El-Gamal.

Some of the offers were a mere flash in the pan, but others were legitimate, including a $17 million cash deal from one developer, the source said.

The attraction in this hot market was buying real estate that could be demolished, the source said. A second downtown mosque, not affiliated with El-Gamal, considered spending $18 million for 45-47 Park Place in early 2008.

But the Pomerantz family -- for reasons that remain unclear -- rejected the offers.

They took 70 percent less from El-Gamal than what Glodek offered.

This was a considerable drop even given the 30 percent decline in market values at the time, said Michael Falsetta, executive vice president of Miller Cicero, a real-estate appraisal firm not involved in the deals.

"That makes us suspicious," he said.

It should make everyone suspicious. But anyone becoming suspicious of very suspicious activity is now called a racist, bigot and Islamophobe by the New McCarthyites, led by that pusillanimous pipsqueak mayor of New York.

Meanwhile, for a guy who was a petty criminal until fairly recently, how is it El-Gamal overnight went from waiting tables to being a multimillionaire?

One of the developers of the controversial Islamic center and mosque being proposed for downtown Manhattan two blocks from ground zero was arrested in Tampa in 2000.

For stealing panty hose.

On May 7, 2000, Sammy El-Gamal – who told Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office deputies that he was a server at the restaurant Mise En Place at the time – walked into the women's lingerie department at the Walmart at 2701 E. Fletcher Ave. He opened a box of European Luxury Collection large black panty hose, took them out of the box and stuffed them into his right front pants pocket, according to an arrest report.

El-Gamal then bought a watch in the jewelry department and left the store. He was apprehended by store security. After being arrested, he told deputies that he stole the panty hose – valued at $4.47 – because "he was too embarrassed to purchase them for his girlfriend," according to the report.

I guess this means El-Gamal was arrested at least eight times now.