In 2010, Sharif El-Gamal, founder of Soho Properties and a prominent figure of Lower Manhattan’s Muslim American community, launched the Park51 Islamic Community and Cultural Center project. The stated vision was to create a space to foster Park51 is an Islamic community and cultural center to promote dialogue and understanding of the Islamic faith. The initial designs for the 13-story Islamic Center made a bold architectural statement, wrapped in an exoskeleton of abstract webbed pattern. This vision was not to be, however. Located less than two city blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, the project faced political backlash. Critics ranged from conservative media, politicians, and some families of 9/11 victims, citing the project as a monument to terrorist aggression. After a year of severe public scrutiny, El-Gamal withdrew the project, and instead proposed to transform Park51 into 45 Park Place, composed of a 43-story luxury condominium skyscraper, and a significantly reduced program for the Islamic Center, now only a three-story Islamic Museum. This paper explores the suppression of Islamic spaces in the transformation of Park51 to 45 Park Place by examining the social and cultural implications of the projects’ design iterations and programmatic changes. In this process, the flexibility of Islamic religious practices and space allowed the continual reduction of religious aspects of the project – such as the prayer hall – in the program. More broadly, the history of the Park51/45 Park Place project illustrates how capitalist economy, coupled with political and cultural tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim American communities, eclipsed non-western cultural production on the site. The paper also uses the Park51/45 Park Place project to examine the potential impact of market-driven logics and political tensions on the future of Muslim-American religious space in the U.S.