Islamic center proposals advance in Bay Shore, Shirley and Melville

Bay Shore, Shirley and Melville are each moving different-size Islamic center proposals through Suffolk County’s land-use system, and the first local question in all three places is the same: how much more traffic, activity and neighborhood change each project will bring. In a county divided into 10 towns, those decisions are playing out before separate boards, from Islip to Huntington, rather than in one central forum.

Bay Shore has become the sharpest flashpoint. A Muslim association bought the former Catholic Monfort Missionaries seminary there and plans to turn it into an Islamic school for boys. An Islip hearing on the proposal drew an overflow crowd of opponents, and the public split has centered on the site’s residential setting. Some neighbors objected to the facility in a residential neighborhood, while others argued that houses of worship should be welcomed anywhere.

Shirley’s proposal is larger in a different way. A $5 million Islamic center there has moved to the public hearing stage, and the new mosque would be the second-largest on Long Island. That scale gives the Shirley project a broader footprint than a simple neighborhood prayer space and puts parking, access and service needs under the same kind of scrutiny that has followed the Bay Shore plan.

Melville is the biggest of the three. The proposed 45,000-square-foot center would be Long Island’s largest, and the Islamic Center of Melville already lists its address at 118 Old East Neck Road, Melville, New York 11747. That fixed address gives Melville an established mosque presence even as the larger proposal raises the same questions about scale, traffic and community fit now surfacing in Bay Shore and Shirley.

Together, the three proposals show how Suffolk’s eastern suburbs are handling religious expansion one town board at a time. Suffolk is New York’s easternmost county, and its 10-town structure means Bay Shore, Shirley and Melville can each produce a different answer to the same local test: whether a center is seen as a new neighbor, a new source of congestion or both.