Charlotte business owner in parking feud says she was unjustly arrested
The dispute over parking between Charlotte business owners Robbie McNair-Guzman and Jim Noble has escalated further, with McNair-Guzman being arrested for what she says is a false accusation of communicating a threat about a “shoot out.”
McNair-Guzman, owner of The Good Life at Enderly Park, and Noble, owner of Noble Smoke and other local restaurants, have been at odds for months over space in a shared parking lot. Although her lease grants The Good Life’s customers the right to park in the lot behind Noble Smoke and Bossy Beulah’s — two of Noble’s restaurants — McNair-Guzman says Noble threatened to have her customer cars towed and later put up signs prohibiting them from parking in the lots.
The signs have since been removed and Noble has blamed the property owner (which both he and McNair-Guzman rent from) for the conflict. With the parking situation still unresolved, McNair-Guzman says she’s now unjustly having to defend herself against a criminal charge.
“It is because of racism and privilege that I was put in this predicament in the first place,” McNair-Guzman said.
A senior pastor of a local church who began fighting with McNair-Guzman on social media recently is accusing her of making threats against her and her church, and called McNair-Guzman “an angry woman.”
“... Your defense is to label me as the angry black woman? What’s angry about me asking for my rights,” says McNair-Guzman.
Last week, her husband drove her to the Mecklenburg County jail to turn herself in on a charge of communicating a threat, a misdemeanor offense. While a copy of the arrest warrant released by the sheriff’s office to the Observer last week is redacted to not show the name of the person who complained, interactions and a video on social media show Penny Maxwell, a senior pastor at Freedom House church, accused McNair-Guzman of threatening a “shoot out.”
The charge against McNair-Guzman was filed last Wednesday.
Maxwell sent a statement to the Observer after this story was initially published online saying she’s not commenting on the situation because it’s a legal matter.
McNair-Guzman has been vocal about the dispute on her social media accounts. That’s where, she says, the latest fight happened.
Maxwell, coming to the defense of Noble last month, left comments on McNair-Guzman’s Instagram posts about the parking dispute, McNair-Guzman said in an interview with the Observer on Friday.
Some of the posts or comments have since been deleted but Maxwell shared some screenshots on March 22 in a post she wrote saying “I’m kind of sick of this crap,” and said Noble was being wrongly called a racist.
In one, McNair-Guzman asks, “Lady of the church, do you want to have a shoot out?” and tags both Maxwell and Freedom House. She also says she felt threatened by Maxwell. According to McNair-Guzman, Maxwell insinuated that McNair-Guzman’s location could be “found.”
The arrest warrant for McNair-Guzman appears to misquote the “shoot out” comment she’d tagged Maxwell in last month at the height of the fallout from the parking dispute.
The warrant accuses her of specifically asking “Do you want to have a shoot-out at church this coming Sunday,” which the officer says was probable cause for charging her with making a threat.
A few hours after she turned herself in, McNair-Guzman was allowed to leave with a court date set for September.
“No one threatened to have a shoot out,” McNair-Guzman said. “No, I did not make that allegation.”
It’s not clear what Maxwell’s relationship is to Noble, though there is a photo of them, along with a group of people, in front of Noble Smoke posted last week. Representatives for Noble did not respond to requests for comment.
“I was not even familiar with or heard her name before,” McNair-Guzman said. “I was familiar with Freedom House and the controversy of the church and the politics.”
Freedom House most recently made headlines last year when they decided to forgo the city’s mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a 7-minute video and an Instagram post, Maxwell rants against McNair-Guzman’s handling of the parking dispute, saying “If you pull the race card every time you disagree with someone, then when people really are racist, people won’t listen to you.”
McNair-Guzman says it’s impossible to ignore the racial elements of the parking dispute. She said that Noble could only spot that her customers were parking in the lot because they’re mostly Black, that going to jail was especially scary because she’s a Black woman and that the gentrification of Enderly Park is at the root of the whole ordeal.
“I want to keep having these conversations,” she said. “Why is this allowed?
“Why am I here? I didn’t put my hands on anyone.”
This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 3:23 PM.
