Grand residence planned at Namgyal Monastery
Tom Serrano is an experienced community journalist who earned his degree in Communications from SUNY Cortland. With over six years of reporting for various local media outlets, he is deeply committed to covering the diverse stories that define Ithaca’s neighborhoods.
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First, Ithaca’s Tibetan Buddhist community completed a monastery on Ithaca’s South Hill, then came the library and museum. Now the Namgyal Monastery is planning its latest addition: a stately residence fit for a spiritual leader. Plans were reviewed by the Town of Ithaca Planning Board last Tuesday night. The project involves the construction of a 4,809-square-foot private residence on the eastern side of the property. It’s the latest expansion at a site that has become one of the most prominent centers of Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Hemisphere. The current Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, chose to build the library at Ithaca’s Namgyal Monastery over dozens of other possible locations across the globe. Ithaca is His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s North American seat. Representatives from the monastery declined to comment when asked what the residence was for. A rendering of the residence at Namgyal Monastary filed with Town of Ithaca Planning De