While business is picking up for Olive Mountain at its new location, restaurant manager and co-owner Ahmed Saleh says he remains “really bitter” about the process that forced the restaurant to move.
“Business is not that easy to build. The first three weeks were a nightmare,” Saleh said. “But now, thank God, it’s getting better.”
Olive Mountain ended its decade-long stay at 814 Church St. on Dec. 1 and reopened at 610 Davis St. on Jan. 13 after the owners agreed to sell their building to Thomas J. Klutznick Co., the Sherman Plaza developer, for $1 million in Feb. 2001.
Saleh and Hasib Blan, the restaurant’s other owner, agreed to the sale about one month after City Council asked the Illinois State Legislature to condemn the property and give it to the city, with compensation to be determined later in court. The building the restaurant occupied was needed to complete the $110 million Sherman Plaza development project, now under construction.
The legislature refused to hear the council’s request to speed up the condemnation process, but the city set plans in motion for a longer process to take over the land within two years.
“I didn’t have the choice to stay or leave,” Saleh said Sunday. “I was forced to leave.”
Although business at Olive Mountain fell in January, Saleh said it is starting to recover.
Saleh said he has been sending brochures to customers, informing them of the new address. But he said business may not reach previous levels again because the Church Street location was in a higher-profile area.
He said the owners chose the Davis Street location because it offered the most reasonable lease agreement.
Saleh said he believed the city gave Klutznick preferential treatment. He questioned why Klutznick received help from the city gaining land.
Saleh said he was angry at the way city officials handled the process, particularly Ald. Arthur Newman (1st).
“I was threatened by (Newman),” Saleh said. “‘You have no rights’ is pretty much what he told me.”
Newman denied the charges, saying that it was not the first time the owner had misrepresented the circumstances of Olive Mountain’s move.
“(Saleh) has completely used the community,” Newman said, citing past articles in The Daily and Evanston Review as examples.
Saleh and Newman also disagreed about the quality of the compensation the owners received. Saleh said there was no amount of money that could make up for what his business lost.
“Ten years of building business over there, there’s no price for that,” Saleh said.
But Newman said he thought Saleh approached negotiations as an opportunity to profit, not to receive fair compensation.
“He just acted like a gold-digger with the city,” Newman said. “Our intent was to keep businesses (in Evanston). His motivation was to try to take advantage of the process.”
While maintaining that the city had acted fairly throughout, Newman said he did not harbor ill-will for Saleh.
“I wish the guy nothing but the best,” Newman said.
Saleh said he is also optimistic about the restaurant’s future.
“It took us 10 years to build our business up over there,” Saleh said. “Hopefully it won’t take us as long here.”
