The redevelopment plan seeks to replace the homes with 185 condominiums in three buildings, a community pavilion, a parkand a beachfront restaurant with windows jutting toward the ocean like the prow of a ship.
The complex has a new community pavilion with a grill and fireplace for neighborhood cookouts.
The design also calls for a community pavilion in which residents can learn about organic cooking, using food grown from the on-site garden.
Instead, they have gathered behind a proposal by a loose coalition of Italian-American advocates and African-American leaders, including the developer Jeffrey Dunston, to convert the church into an arts pavilion and community center.
He said the group would like to see the pavilion become a community space.
Among the dozens of socially motivated projects exhibited in the U.S. Pavilion were pieces by community design groups, design activists and information designers.
The biennial's inaugural exhibition has been delayed until April of next year, to be replaced this September by a community-oriented event with pavilions, library pop-ups, and public forums.
With the news that the concessionaire, O-V Hospitality Group, was pulling out, the Manhattan borough president, Scott Stringer, urged the parks department to "reconsider their plans and return the pavilion to full-time public and community uses".
The Pavilion's opening has been protested by community advocates who argue that an upscale restaurant is a perversion of public space.
Alongside the mosque, it hoped to build a 2,000-capacity 2,000-capacityn Islamic library, a sports pavilion andininging fields for thallider community.
