“Our hope is to acquire 156 acres and create an entire life cycle of home ownership. We want to offer rental apartments, townhomes, villas, senior living, and various lot sizes for single-family homes,” said developer Faraaz Yussuf.
There are plans for an event center, coffee shop, grocery story, and a daycare in the development, along with a mosque.
“We wanted to build a ground-up construction, 40,000 square foot mosque,” said Yussuf.
Yussuf has submitted his plans to the city of Lino Lakes for review. Now, the city reviews the project using their 2040 comprehensive plan as a guide.
“The first thing we’re going to look at with any plan that comes in is whether or not it’s consistent with the land use proposed in those areas. We evaluate if it’s consistent with our utility staging plan for sewer and water utilities,” said Lino Lakes community development director Mike Grochala.
Grochala says this concept plan process can take up to two months.
“This is a very high-level plan. We, we send that through all the boards, um, through city staff to review it, and kind of try to give some initial feedback back to that developer of how consistent they are. So, we’re still in that, that review process right now.”
Even with the concept review barely underway, many in the community have taken an interest in the project, with hundreds of people attending a couple recent council meetings.
“We’ve certainly had a lot of interest in what’s happening up here lately,” said Grochala.
“Anytime that we want to build a mosque, anytime, Muslims have tried to build any sort of development, wherever it is in the country, there has been pushback, um, but how early it started and how strong the opposition has been has definitely been a surprising point for us,” said Yussuf.
Yussuf says that overall, he doesn’t think his proposal is any different than some existing neighborhoods.
“So, it’s a unique idea in the sense that it is, um, master planned. It’s we’re telling you from the beginning that we’re going to build all these homes and apartments and coffee shops and commercial and it will have a place of worship in it as well. If you look at the Greek Orthodox community in America, you look at the Mormon community in America, the Amish community in America, and this is not new, right? This is a true and tried method. It’s no different than what you see up and down Main Street. You have a lot of different religious institutions kind of fabricated into residential communities. The only difference for us was we had kind of just master planned it from the beginning,” said Yussuf.
One factor in the development is that while city utilities are extended to serve the Madinah site, the city needs to determine how much capacity is available to serve the area. The city may consider a one-year moratorium on new development in this part of the city to study the impact of new homes on the water supply. Along with that, the city would do a master plan that encompasses the north west quadrant of the city.
“So that is kind of where we’re looking at doing at this point is that we do a broader master plan over that area to lay out some of the bigger issues that would help then guide development as it moves forward. So, that ultimately may be what the council considers,” said Grochala.
Yussuf says if the city chooses one of these ideas, he won’t give up. He’ll continue to work toward bringing Madinah Lakes to Lino Lakes.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’ll fight the moratorium and if we don’t win that battle, once the moratorium ends, we’ll still be standing at the other side of it,” said Yussuf.
