Gas station called 'cancer in our midst' loses appeal and must leave

A city board ruled against a Louisville gas station called a "cancer in our midst" on Friday and said it would have to shut down — upholding a first-of-its-kind punishment against a for-profit business.

A fiery, hours-long hearing unearthed some fresh allegations against the BP gas station at 601 E. Broadway in the Phoenix Hill neighborhood, as the owner Maher Ghareeb pleaded with city officials to let him try to make "a living ... an honest living."

Gas station employees would pay homeless people in beer or chicken to clean the parking lot, said Shaun Sargent, a Louisville police officer, who testified under oath that he'd heard that from numerous people.

And an alleged employee, who Ghareeb denied employing, was arrested last summer on charges of selling marijuana, said Officer Christina Beaven, the first division's resource officer. He was identified as an employee of the BP in an arrest slip dated Aug. 2, 2017.

Background: City slaps busy gas station with first-of-its-kind order to vacate

The property and its 500-foot radius were a well-known problem area in Louisville police's first division, Beaven said — costing taxpayers an estimated $116,913.88 in response. The officers said beat cops would make frequent trips to the location for alcohol intoxication or use of the synthetic marijuana drug "spice."

There are "other gas stations in the area that don't cause that much trouble," Beaven said, adding that there'd been 209 calls for service in the past 12 months, with an additional 85 called in by police officers themselves.

At the appeal hearing Friday, Ghareeb and his attorney Nader George Shunnarah said they'd found a private company that agreed to provide security services for the BP gas station.

"We're taking it a step more serious," Ghareeb said, "to help you and help ourselves."

But the appeal was denied — and the order to vacate upheld — after they were unable to make a deal with prosecutors from the Jefferson County Attorney's Office. The sticking point: whether Ghareeb would agree to stop serving single beers.

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"This particular facility almost operates as a cancer in our midst," said Matthew Golden with the Jefferson County Attorney's Office. "... We cannot continue to allow this kind of operation ... without redress."

The order to vacate will be enforced after the 30-day appeal period ends, city spokesman Will Ford said. A second appeal would go to court, he said. If they do make an appeal to District Court, the business could remain open during that time.

After the hearing on Friday, Shunnarah told the Courier Journal he planned to appeal early next week: "We believe that we will be vindicated once we get to a court."

Officials ordered the BP gas station in the Phoenix Hill neighborhood, adjacent to Smoketown, to leave the property earlier this month after it received repeated violations and, most recently, was the scene of a shooting allegedly involving an employee.

Under the city's rules, a public nuisance is defined as any premise where law enforcement on more than one occasion over a 12-month period have issued an incident report or criminally cited or arrested someone for various violations such as theft, prostitution and drug offenses.

Three years ago, Metro Council expanded those rules to cover hotels and motels, and added assault and homicide to the list of offenses considered a nuisance.

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The gas station was first deemed a public nuisance in March 2017, according to a letter from the city's codes and regulations department. That notification cited three instances of people drinking alcoholic beverages in the parking lot.

Five months later the BP location was again called a public nuisance after police arrested someone for selling marijuana.

A letter earlier this month was the third notification and followed a May 18 shooting inside the business. Munye Adan, 33, faces a first-degree assault charge in connection with that incident, which he told police was an accident.

The June letter carried a civil penalty of $800, as well as an order to vacate.

In the months of interaction between city officials and Ghareeb, he pledged a few times to hire security officers, according to Wesley M. Barbour, the code enforcement specialist who hand-delivered the gas station the order to vacate.

"I would love nothing more than this business to have no ... nuisance activity. It's been 16 months," Barbour said. "... I'd have to see it to believe it, at this point."

Darcy Costello: 502-582-4834; dcostello@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @dctello. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/darcyc.