The owner of a historic downtown Huntsville building says she felt threatened by angry social media attacks after not renewing the lease of a popular pizzeria.

“Thankfully, I have not been physically hurt as over 1,000 Facebook posts flew back and forth with some suggesting physical violence,” Margaret Anne Goldsmith said in a new written response to the controversy. “One person wrote that I should be lynched.”

(Read Goldsmith’s full response below.)

Goldsmith wrote that she “was frightened” by the response to her decision not to renew the lease of Sam & Greg’s, an established pizza and gelato restaurant at 119 North Side Square. Her decision started with plans for a major renovation to repair deterioration of the 150-year-old building and bring it up to building codes, she said.

Another restaurant will eventually occupy the building, Goldsmith said, and she will renovate the upstairs for office space. The new restaurant has not been determined.

Goldsmith also said that a craft beer pub will be coming to another building she owns next door to Sam & Greg’s current location. That building formerly housed an architect’s office.

Goldsmith’s plans made local news when Sam & Greg’s owner Greg Hathorn said in November that his lease wasn’t being renewed. News that Sam & Greg’s might close upset many downtown supporters. The popular restaurant opened on the square years before the area’s current popularity as an entertainment district.

Hathorn has since announced plans to buy another building on the south side of the square. He and his wife and partner will renovate it into a bigger and better restaurant, Hathorn said.

“None of the alternatives we submitted to each other were suitable,” Goldsmith writes of the back-and-forth between herself and Hathorn over the non-renewal of the lease, which she attributes to her need “to renovate, make necessary repairs to the deterioration and bring the building up to code.”

Goldsmith said she understands Hathorn’s position and feelings and wrote her recent response for a different reason.

“The Antagonist (sic) in my story, the ‘bad guy,’ has been Facebook,” Goldsmith writes, “a social media forum created for friends to keep in touch and share their lives with each other. Unfortunately, Facebook and other social media have also provided a forum for people who don’t know both sides of a story and who may not even know each other, to denigrate, threaten and attempt to destroy the character and good name of the one being attacked.”

Goldsmith said the eviction story is now “old news,” but the threat of social media bullying remains against those who make unpopular decisions. “I work for myself; no one’s going to fire me,” she said. “If I were working for someone else, they could fire me. I don’t want this to happen to someone who can’t withstand it.”

“When we as a community observe unbridled bullying on Facebook and other public forums,” she said, “we have a responsibility to neither contribute to the attack nor remain silent and indifferent.”