MARIETTA — The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by Waleed “Lee” Jaraysi seeking to prevent the city from razing his unfinished wedding hall on South Marietta Parkway near Interstate 75.

City attorney Doug Haynie said the ruling brings the city closer to razing the building.

“In essence, the city is one step closer to the completion of this litigation,” Haynie said.

Haynie said Jaraysi has 10 days to ask the court to reconsider, “but it is not likely that the Supreme Court will do that.”

If Jaraysi does ask for reconsideration, it could delay the city from moving forward with demolition by two or three more weeks, Haynie said, provided the court ultimately rejects the request.

Once that happens, the city can move forward on the demolition, since the City Council set aside $90,000 to raze the building in July 2010.

“That budget money is still there and would be used to demolish once all of this is over,” Haynie said.

The case dates to 2005, when the city granted Jaraysi a permit to build an 8,000-square-foot wedding hall. The city halted construction on the building in December 2005 upon discovering the structure being built was about 24,000 square feet. It has been tied up in the court system ever since.

In July 2010, Cobb Superior Court Judge Adele Grubbs granted an order for the city to demolish the structure, a decision Jaraysi then appealed to the state Court of Appeals. The appellate court sided with Grubbs in June, prompting Jaraysi to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Jaraysi claims that the city in fact granted him a permit for a 24,000-square-foot building, and that only the first floor was to be 8,000 square feet. However, he was unable to produce a copy of the permit indicating that when requested by the Journal.

“The city keeps playing the same music just to make me look bad … that I started with eight and ended up with 24,” Jaraysi said Monday. “This is a silly joke. They do that because they need to cover themselves to find something wrong so they can tear it down. They need an excuse and they found this silly excuse.”

Meanwhile, the Washington, D.C.-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, has apparently taken up Jaraysi’s cause. The group, which describes itself as the nation’s largest Arab-American civil rights organization, has accused Mayor Steve Tumlin and the City Council of “blatant discrimination” against Jaraysi based on his national origin. Jaraysi says he is an Arab Christian and native of Nazareth, Israel.

In a letter to Tumlin dated Sept. 29, Abed A. Ayoub, the ADC’s legal director, and Alyaa El-Abbadi, its legal fellow, wrote that “the city has refused to allow Mr. Jaraysi to complete his building because of their fear of creating a centralized ‘Arab’ area, which indicates the cities (sic) intolerance towards Arab-Americans” and warned that the group “will not tolerate the profiling and discrimination of Mr. Jaraysi and the community.”

Haynie said the ADC’s allegation is “completely off-base.”

“Obviously the city would not discriminate against any person, group or anyone else,” Haynie said, noting that the case has now been reviewed by seven state Supreme Court justices, three state Court of Appeals judges and one Superior Court judge.

“Eleven judges in Georgia have reviewed this and found no merit to what Mr. Jaraysi is saying,” Haynie said.

During the public comment portion of the City Council’s Wednesday’s meeting, Michael Sabbagh, who identified himself as a Snellville City councilman and friend of Jaraysi, claimed that Jaraysi had the money to finish the building and that Council should allow him to do so.

Yet Councilman Jim King responded by saying that Sabbagh had promised to put the money in an escrow account for him to look at, but had failed to live up to that promise.

Sabbagh also claimed to be a professor at Southern Polytechnic State University; however an SPSU spokeswoman said he had not been associated with SPSU for five years.

Moreover, Sabbagh warned that if the Council did not settle with Jaraysi, Al Jazeera news would begin reporting on the case.

Haynie said the claim is all talk.

“It simply is a verbal statement by an elected official from Snellville,” Haynie said. “The city’s never seen one penny that’s been put in escrow. If that ever happens, then we’ll analyze it. But until that happens, it is simply verbal discussion, which at this stage is not something the city is going to look at.”

Still, Jaraysi said Monday that he has $275,000 in a bank account, which is sufficient to finish the building’s exterior.

“There is money in that account, but their attorney will never return the calls from my guy to tell him what kind of escrow, the terms. It’s in the bank now waiting since a couple of weeks ago,” Jaraysi said. “We have enough to cover up the building to make the eyesore go away, which is about $275,000. That’s for the outside for a shell building.”