The drawings have gone across the Atlantic to India and back. They have been tweaked and improved during the course of a year.

Now plans for the first mosque to be built in Palo Alto, at 998 San Antonio Road, are finally ready for review. They are scheduled to be presented by the Anjuman-e-Jamali Muslim group to the city's Architectural Review Board Thursday. The preliminary feedback session is expected to start at 8:30 a.m.

The 10,122-square-foot building would contain a 40-foot mosque with a roughly 60-foot minaret, adjacent to a two-story community center and parking structure, according to Matt Johnson, one of the designers from Barton Architect.

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The plans come from the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Islam, a group that includes about 80 families on the Peninsula, Essabhoy said.

The sect is based out of India — hence the local group's back-and-forth communication to get approval from the religious authority there.

The new mosque will be a home for a community that has spent a decade bouncing between temporary spaces, searching for a site to build a permanent worship hall.

"We were hopping around from place to place. ... It was tough," Essabhoy said. Meeting at community centers and other churches, the group was at the mercy of others' schedules and availability. It was hard to organize events without dependable headquarters, he said.

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more info on Dawoodi Bohra sect.