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There are several lines of evidence for this.

First: It is established in the two Sahīh collections, on the authority of ʿĀʾishah, may Allah be pleased with her, that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Were it not that your people have only recently left the age of pre-Islamic ignorance, I would have dismantled the Kaaba, brought it down to ground level, and given it two doors: one through which people would enter and another through which they would leave.”

It is well known that the Kaaba is the most excellent endowment on the face of the earth. Had altering and replacing it in the manner he described, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, been obligatory, he would not have refrained from doing so. It is therefore clear that this was permissible and would have been more beneficial, were it not for the consideration he mentioned: that Quraysh had only recently embraced Islam. This would have involved replacing its structure with another. It is thus clear that this is permissible in principle. Replacing one structural arrangement with another is one form of replacement.

It is also established that ʿUmar and ʿUthmān altered the structure of the Prophet’s Mosque, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. ʿUmar rebuilt it using materials like those of its original construction: mud bricks and palm trunks. ʿUthmān, however, rebuilt it using superior materials, such as teak. In either case, the Rightly Guided Caliphs replaced the mud bricks and trunks that had formed part of the endowment with other materials. This was among the most widely known occurrences, yet no one objected to it.

There is no difference between replacing one building with another and replacing one site with another when the benefit to be gained calls for it. Thus, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb replaced the mosque of Kufa with another mosque: he replaced the site itself