Westside Village buildings demolished

Precious Muhammad claims she is standing up for endangered historic buildings.

A development team’s lawsuit claims she’s standing in the way of access to its property.

The local city councilman simply hopes the opponents manage to work out their differences.

A year ago, Muhammad, a former flight attendant, and her ex-husband paid a healthy $1.2 million to buy a small cluster of shopworn buildings at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Joseph Lowery Boulevard. Just behind them, construction was well underway on a $75 million expansion of the on-again-off-again Historic Westside Village project.

Muhammad certainly could’ve picked another site for her business – a job-training center for juvenile offenders – but, she explains, there was a principle behind her purchase.

Only a few months earlier, the Westside Village development team of H.J. Russell and Trammell Crow had unveiled plans to preserve the row of 1920s storefronts on the north side of MLK Jr. Drive, perhaps adding a layer of condos atop the old retail strip. Says Muhammad: “They promised the community that they’d save our historic buildings, they got our support – and then they tore them down.”