Abdulsalem Mused wasn’t counting his chickens before they hatched.

       The 37-year-old businessman had spent decades building a small empire of halal poultry slaughterhouses across the country, juggling special-use permits and changing zoning codes to offer up live birds, butchered to order for his customers.

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       Yet the kind of stern opposition he encountered in Alexandria — a drag-out debate with nearby pet stores and doggy day cares, a contentious city council vote, and then even a lawsuit — made him doubt whether he would set up shop in the Northern Virginia city at all.

       “If I knew it was going to be that way, I would not even think of doing it," Mused said of the fuss in 2018, when he first fought to open his shop in Alexandria. “It just feels bad when you feel like you’ve been accused of wrongdoing.”

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       Critics had expressed concerns that the shop, which brings in poultry in closed-box trucks from Pennsylvania’s Amish country, would stink up the neighborhood with the scent of live birds.

       Owners and clients at many of the pet-oriented businesses nearby had banded together to oppose having a slaughterhouse so close by. At one city council meeting, one detractor warned of feathers and blood running down the street.

       Yet nearly five years after Mused first looked into bringing his operation to Virginia, DC Poultry Market finally opened on July 28. And so far, the worries about odor or other issues have not yet come to pass.

       On a hot morning this week, there was no noticeable smell on the sidewalk outside the market, and little activity on the street besides the occasional FedEx truck or dogwalker — though some neighboring businesses are anxiously awaiting what might happen when business ramps up.

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       Inside the shop, the steady trickle of customers consisted mostly of Asian and African immigrants who have increasingly settled the suburbs of Northern Virginia: One Egyptian couple was thrilled they could finally find halal meat in the area. A curious woman from China, in search of black silkie chickens, took a tour of the cages in the back.

       Regina Agyemng, a nurse assistant originally from Ghana, said she had driven over from Lorton for the second time in two days, awaiting a haul of guinea hens that she planned to stew with tomatoes, onions and peppers.

       “When you see something fresh, you want it again and again,” she said.

       Agyemng had previously driven several hours with friends to farms in Pennsylvania for the kind of chicken that she had grown up cooking and eating in Ghana. Otherwise, she said, she was forced to go to the poultry section at her local Giant. In an urban, mostly residential city like Alexandria, chickens cannot be kept in backyards.

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       In many ways, her predicament is the kind Musad was hoping to solve with his store.

       An immigrant from Yemen, he was still in high school when he and his older brother opened their first store, Saba Live Poultry, in Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood. Soon one shop became nine across New York City, plus others in Philadelphia and Connecticut.

       But when asking customers where they were coming from, he soon noticed many were driving hours from northern Virginia. Within the state, the nearest halal slaughterhouse is about a 90-minute drive away, in Fauquier or Prince William counties.

       According to halal practices, which follow Islamic law, chickens or other poultry must be alive and healthy right before they are slaughtered, and all blood must be drained from their neck.

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       The sparse white shop is dotted with chairs for customers to sit and wait — some still have wrapping paper on the legs — and decorative plastic signs that say “Welcome” and “Blessed.” In an office off to the side, there’s a framed map of Virginia and two American flags.

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       The owners and employees at other businesses on the largely industrial Colvin Street either declined to comment about the shop — “it’s so two years ago,” as one put it — or said they had paid little mind to the DC Poultry Market.

       “I’ve barely thought about it,” said Catherine Soltesz, 26, who just moved into a warehouse space for her flower truck business around the corner. “I know that it’s happening and it’s around here somewhere.”

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       Next door, David Argueta, 37, was pulling a tire off its rim at Jose’s New & Used Tires. He had poked his head in to check out the shop, he said, and was thinking about maybe buying a chicken for himself soon.

       “It’s something different, something new,” he said. “Maybe one or two people don’t like it, but they’re here — I hope they do well.”

       But Sandy Modell, owner of the nearby Wholistic Hound Academy, expressed concerns that other mom-and-pop businesses along Colvin Street, which hosts an annual “Love Your Pets” festival, would soon start to feel the impact.

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       “It’s just common sense: You can look at any city that’s got a slaughterhouse: It stinks," she said. "It may not stink right now, because it’s two weeks old.”

       Although the area had been zoned for industrial purposes, it had been changing, with new restaurants opening up around the corner.

       “We had a number of very cool businesses on Colvin Street,” Modell said, “and now we have a poultry slaughterhouse.”