A mosque in downtown Calgary that drew unwanted attention after a handful of its members were radicalized is set to close its doors.

Navaid Aziz, director of education and social services at he Downtown 8th and 8th Musallah confirmed Friday would the last big prayer service at the mosque.

“We are moving to a bigger and better space," said Aziz. “Within a two block radius of where we are currently.”

The decision to relocate was years in the making as the lease was coming to an end and the building will be reconstructed.

Aziz says he's looking forward to a fresh start for himself, the community and the mosque.

“A couple years back, that mosque was plastered over every media outlet as a breeding ground and a hub for radicalization and terrorism. Any positive effort we made always got overshadowed by that.”

In 2012, Aziz arrived in Calgary and was responsible for overseeing two mosques as there was a dearth of imams or religious leaders in the city. The return of an imam to Calgary allowed Aziz to focus his attention on the 8th and 8th location.

“That’s where I started seeing that, hey, there are a couple of issues that needed to be addressed but at that time it was too late. Some of the individuals had already travelled overseas and were already doing some bad stuff.”

Aziz says the mosque's location with easy access to the LRT line, the group of young men that lived in the apartment building next door and the fact the space was, for the most, unmonitored, created a perfect storm. “That is what allowed the process to be fulfilled over there.”

“We had one other major incident that took place after that, which was the case of Mohamed Farah Shirdon."

Aziz says the investigations that followed into radicalization at the mosque temporarily frightened away some followers

“People were very afraid. They didn’t want to be affiliated with something like that,” said Aziz. “That trust was regained very, very quickly. People came back"

“Since then, we’ve come a long way. We’ve developed mentoring groups that focus not only on preventing radicalization and extremism but focus on just keeping youth safe in general, from criminality, from gang violence, from promiscuity, from substance abuse.”

Preparations are currently underway for the move and Aziz hopes to open the new location by May at the latest.

With files from CTV's Kamil Karamani

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