A Manhattan lawyer with ties to the Saudi royal family is floating to officials and community leaders a potential plan to move the controversial Ground Zero mosque away from its proposed site near the World Trade Center to another Manhattan neighborhood.
Attorney Dudley Gaffin is claiming King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia might want to buy shuttered St. Vincent's Medical Center in the West Village and transfer the mosque to a new Islamic cultural center he would build on a plot at the site, say sources who have heard Gaffin's pitch.
The king, worth more than $20 billion, would also save the hospital, reopening most of the units that closed when St. Vincent's filed for bankruptcy on April 14, the sources said.
