City councillors in Mississauga voted in favour of a new mosque in the city’s northwest on Monday night, after its proponents offered to shorten its planned minaret and dome.

The Meadowvale Islamic Centre proposed building a 12,000 square foot mosque, complete with prayer rooms, classrooms, and a gymnasium at 6508 and 6494 Winston Churchill Boulevard, just across the road from Meadowvale Town Centre. The building and land are expected to cost a total of $4 million.

“This proposal met all of the city’s planning requirements, including zoning and parking requirements and addressed traffic concerns,” Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie said in a statement released after the planning and development committee meeting Monday night. "All residents must have confidence in their municipal government that applications will be reviewed and adjudicated fairly and without bias.”

The newly proposed minaret, a tower built at the site of a mosque, traditionally used by a crier who calls people in the surrounding neighbourhood to prayer, will be seven metres shorter than first proposed, while the Mosque’s dome will be three and a half metres shorter than first proposed.

Residents in the neighbourhood criticized the project at earlier public meetings, saying worshippers will overflow its 115 parking spaces during certain prayer times. Others took issue with the building’s size and how its operation would impact traffic in the area.

Hundreds of Mississauga residents attended Monday’s meeting, so many arrived that city staff had to open five overflow rooms outside of council chambers to seat everyone.

Resident Cheryl Pounder said the despite city staff approval of the project, it is too close to other homes in the neighbourhood, and doesn’t “fit” in the community, given the increase in traffic it will bring.

“You are building on top of a community, you’re building on people’s homes, and it isn’t fair,” Pounder told councillors Monday night.

“I respect everyone in this room, I believe everyone should have a place to worship, I really, really do — it’s just the wrong location.”

Ward councillor Pat Saito cast the lone vote in opposition on Monday night. She said she was only prepared to support the mosque proposal if it were made much smaller. She said she feels the proposed facility will attract more worshippers over time, overwhelming the parking lot.

“Once there’s a new facility, more people are going to want to use it.”

She said that opposition in the neighbourhood to the appearance of the mosque was in no way driven by Islamophobia.

“If it was a church spire (residents) would have the same concern, if it were a big cross they would have the same concern, if it was a telecommunications tower of the same height, there would be the same issue,” Saito said. “It just happens in this case to be a dome and a minaret.”

She said that residents in the area are considering appealing council’s decision at the Ontario Municipal Board.

One of them has started a crowdfunding effort seeking to raise $50,000 for the cost of a possible appeal.

A parking study commissioned by the city found that the new Mosque would likely attract more cars than its 115 parking spots could hold, but that the overflow could be accommodated with on-street parking in the area, parking in a nearby church parking lot, and by increasing the number of prayer times offered at the Mosque.

A spokesperson with Meadowvale Islamic Centre, Moid Mohammed, said the mosque would offer more prayer times if needed.

“If necessary, we have a fairly wide window when we can do Friday prayers.”

Mohammed says that despite the work that’s been done by members of the Meadowvale Islamic Centre to inform the neighbourhood about the proposed mosque, they’re still encountering misconceptions.

Mohammed said several people have asked them if the mosque plans to use its minaret to call people to prayer with the help of loudspeakers, something that would be likely to violate Mississauga’s noise bylaw, and is also not customary for Muslims in North America.

“I think people have seen that on TV in other countries, but in Canada we don’t do that,” Mohammed said.

Council as a whole will be asked to vote on the proposal at its Oct. 14 meeting.