When St. Paul’s West Side residents think of Stryker’s Market, some recall the time store owner Hamza Ahmad Abualzain pulled out a machete and sliced a customer in the hand and elbow for complaining about the price of juice.

Then there was the time Abualzain was arrested for selling unlicensed tobacco products. And in 2014, a state health inspection uncovered food stored on the floor in an inch of standing water.

Still others recall how in 2011, an earlier store owner, Khaffak Ansari, was convicted of $2.5 million in federal food stamp fraud but escaped to Belize to avoid his sentence. U.S. marshals discovered him tending bar in the resort island of Ambergris Caye.

West Side resident Duffy Pearce remembered her daughter once coming home to report she had been offered narcotics in the convenience store’s parking lot, twice.

“People approached her from both sides of her car, offering to sell drugs,” she said.

Pearce and others in the area cheered when the small grocer at 605 Stryker Ave. — more recently known as West Side Groceries — finally lost its retail and tobacco licenses last year and went out of business.

Now, the same residents are gritting their teeth over its reopening.

Workers have been installing coolers and bringing materials into the store for days, and have informed them that West Side Groceries could reopen before the end of the month.

“This was not a small issue, this market,” Pearce said. “It was a neighborhood blight for many years. It’s been closed a couple times due to arrests.”

CITY, STATE HANDS TIED

Ramsey County property records show Ahmad Al-Hawwari has owned the structure at 605 Stryker Ave. since 2011, but the retail food licenses rejected by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture were filed in the name of other store managers.

Legally, he’s a longtime building owner but a new store owner, and entitled to a fresh start in the eyes of the state.

“That’s what’s been a little bit frustrating about this bureaucratically for me,” said St. Paul City Council Member Rebecca Noecker. “It is the same owner. He is now applying for the license himself, instead of through a tenant. It’s technically a new applicant for this license.”

Reached Thursday, Al-Hawwari said he’s not promising that the shop — his sixth — will never attract trouble, but he plans to run a legitimate business.

“For three years, we tried to kick the tenant out for his illegal activities,” said Al-Hawwari on Thursday, describing a lawsuit he filed in Ramsey County District Court to get rid of Abualzain, the previous store manager. “And yet we could not get help from anybody.”

“We went to the court of appeals twice,” he said. “Finally, the only way was to go to the health department to condemn the business.”

Despite concerns in the neighborhood, Al-Hawwari said he intends to operate a better market than previous managers.

“Of course we’re going to run a decent business,” said Al-Hawwari, who said he has declined purchase offers. “There’s no way we will copy the way (Abualzain) was running his business.”

Court records show a complicated history.

Abualzain, 36, was convicted of felony cigarette sales tax fraud in Ramsey County District Court in March 2013 and received three years supervised probation, from which he was discharged in March of this year.

In December 2014, Abualzain was convicted of a gross misdemeanor for knowingly violating a food handler’s license, and in January 2015 he was convicted of second-degree felony assault with a dangerous weapon. An attempt to reach him for comment through his attorney was unsuccessful.

Under the name A&M Market LLC, Al-Hawwari sued Abualzain in Ramsey County District Court in 2011 to end his 10-year lease and option to buy the structure, but the case was settled in September 2015 and dismissed.

A previous owner, Ansari, 50, who had fled to Belize to avoid his prison stay, was sentenced in May 2012 to three years and five months in federal prison for food stamp fraud, to be followed by three years of supervised release. He was released on July 7.

“I represented him a few years ago, and he went to prison. I haven’t talked with him,” said his former attorney John Lucas.

In recent weeks, neighborhood residents have repeatedly asked the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to block Al-Hawwari’s license to sell food, but department spokeswoman Margaret Hart said his application meets all the current requirements.

“The market is opening under new ownership after an inspection and retail food handler licensing by the MDA,” Hart said. “The owner is licensed by the MDA to sell prepackaged food and raw, whole produce only. The owner has met all the conditions of licensure.”

Noecker said she spoke with the city attorney and Department of Agriculture at length.

“Neighbors spent years of their lives trying to find a way to shut it down, and they were successful,” she said. “Based on this legal loophole, it’s now going to reopen, and it’s really frustrating and makes all of us angry.”

At her prompting, the West Side Community Organization planned a community meeting with Al-Hawwari at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 10 at the Baker Center, at 209 Page St. W.

“We hope that as a forum … we can arrive at mutually agreed upon expectations going forward,” said Krysten Ryba-Tures, board president of WSCO. “It’s going to take a good-faith effort to build trust with the community.”

Noecker agrees.

“He was interested in coming,” Noecker said. “And to the owner’s credit, he was (previously) in court trying to get the previous tenants out. He was aware of the activity. … That’s another side of this. It doesn’t change the fact that trust has been broken, and it’s going to take a lot to restore that trust.”

CAN HE SELL CIGARETTES?

The store’s tobacco license presents another issue.

The city of St. Paul revoked the store’s right to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products in 2015, but city ordinances allow a new owner to ask the city council for a new tobacco license if they meet certain conditions.

Noecker said that if Al-Hawwari does plan to sell tobacco, she plans to scrutinize the history of his tobacco licenses at five other locations throughout the metro.

“I’m really not interested in granting that if it’s going to be a problem in the neighborhood,” she said. For now, the issue is moot. Though Al-Hawwari said Thursday that he plans to carry tobacco, a spokesman for the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections said he had not received an application from the market owner for a tobacco license.

In emails to the state, Pearce emphasized the history of illegal activity at the market. On July 27, a food-safety official responded by noting that public safety concerns are handled by the city and the police, not the Department of Agriculture.

A NEGATIVE HISTORY

Without tobacco, residents wonder how the market — which has no gas pumps — will stay afloat without resuming the illicit activities that got it shut down in the first place.

Carol Harder, who oversees community garden plots next to the convenience store, said she has few positive memories of the shop, which she said sold expired food.

The shop offered few trash receptacles, a trash bin was locked overnight, and wrappers frequently flew into her community garden. “Management of the store was a real challenge to us,” she said. “We collected about two garbage bags full of trash.”

Even so, not everyone is opposed to the idea of having another food retailer in the neighborhood.

Harder noted there was limited public transit access in the area, especially on weekends, and many residents who lack cars shop wherever they can go on foot. A new resident at a sober house on Stryker Avenue said he looked forward to having a convenience store next door.

Some others in the area agreed.

“A market is a market,” said Terry Vasquez, a lifelong West Side resident, while folding clothes at a laundry down the street. “People should give it a chance before they start running it down. … The riffraff? You can find that in any neighborhood.”

Editor’s note: On Wednesday, a man answering a phone number provided by a city official claimed he was Al-Hawwari. He described Abualzain as a personal friend who had tried to run a responsible business despite the lease dispute between them. Al-Hawwari’s attorney, John Cabak, confirmed through an assistant on Thursday that the phone number did not, in fact, correspond to Al-Hawwari. Reached on Thursday, the building owner said he did not have a working relationship with Abualzain, who “cost us tens of thousands of dollars.”