He said he was skeptical of the V.A.'s intentions for the Montrose campus and was adamantly opposed to razing buildings that were once used for far-reaching veterans needs, from physical and mental health services to job training.
Locals will tell you that sometime before the war the Serb commander's son was cured of illness by the mosque's hodza, or holy man, and when it came to razing the mosque personal gratitude overcame ethnic contempt.
In September, the court convicted Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to razing medieval shrines, tombs and a 15th-century mosque that formed part of the Unesco world heritage site in Timbuktu, Mali, when the city was seized by Islamic militants in 2012.
In the city's Office of Business Development, Helen Rosenberg, the business services officer who has coordinated the 3 1/2-year effort to make use of the property, expressed doubt about any alternative to razing at least some of the structures.
Although the process can be labor intensive and expensive, finding new uses for old banks is often preferable to razing them, said Peter Iasillo, a former mayor of Port Chester and now executive director of the Port Chester-Rye Brook Chamber of Commerce.
