A Fulton County judge said Thursday that he’ll need a week to decide how to rule on Forest Cove owner Millennia Housing Management’s bid to save the long-condemned Section 8 apartment complex from a court-ordered wrecking ball.

An Atlanta judge in December 2021 deemed the notoriously dilapidated and dangerous southside Atlanta property a public nuisance. He condemned it and ordered it razed by fall 2022, and the Ohio-based mega-landlord has been fighting to overturn that ruling in Fulton County Superior Court ever since.

At issue at the Aug. 10 hearing was Millennia’s motion to enforce a settlement agreement that it made with the city of Atlanta in March 2022, almost three months after Forest Cove was condemned. The deal said that the demolition order would be waived if the remaining residents were rehoused—but the city says it included other stipulations. 

The landlord said Forest Cove should not be razed, because it has upheld the agreement’s terms: Since Forest Cove’s residents have been relocated, the company’s lawyers said, Fulton Judge Eric Dunaway should enforce the deal, effectively voiding the demolition order.

The city’s legal team, however, contended that the settlement hinges on more than relocating the almost 200 households who’d for years been living amid pests, mold, and crime at Forest Cove; it also required Millennia to clean up the refuse and sewage leaks on the now-vacant property and make it safe—which the landlord failed to do.

What’s more, the city would violate its own housing laws by allowing Millennia to skirt the condemnation order, which was issued after Forest Cove racked up 231 code violations for its uninhabitable state, said the city’s lawyer, James Dearing Jr.

“Eighteen months later, it is still the same,” Dearing said of Forest Cove’s condition. At the hearing, he pointed to photographs submitted as evidence that show broken security…