Bogota settles Buddy's Place lawsuit, plans to buy bar

BOGOTA — The borough will buy Buddy’s Place, a shuttered East Fort Lee Road bar that was the site of a 2018 fatal shooting, as part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by the bar’s owners against Mayor Christopher Kelemen, Borough Council members, the police chief and a police captain.

The bar closed in August 2019, shortly after the council placed a condition on the bar's liquor license that it must hire a security officer during late-night hours to curb illegal activity.

That requirement was a “death knell to Buddy’s Place,” the owners said in the federal suit, filed in 2021.

The council added the condition after Police Chief Daniel Maye asked officials to help the Police Department reduce crime near the bar, which sits on a dead-end street next to the borough's Department of Public Works building and near the railroad tracks.

Maye told the council in June 2019 that over the previous year and a half, officers had responded to 41 fights, 24 reports of disorderly people and 30 reports of suspicious activity, and had made 13 drug arrests and 20 criminal arrests in the neighborhood.

In December 2018, Dakota Johnson, a 28-year-old Hackensack man, was shot outside Buddy's Place in the early morning hours after a dispute. He died of his wounds on the front lawn of a home around the corner. Talek Lawson was found guilty of murder in the shooting last year and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Before the shooting, Buddy’s Place had been in business for more than two decades “without incident” and was “an icon in the neighborhood it served,” the lawsuit said. Afterward, there was an increased police presence in the area and “constant harassment” of customers, damaging the business, according to the suit.

The bar’s owners, Joseph Marante and Robert Freeman, said in the complaint that Maye had “presented a mountain of false information” and that the council did not verify the information before placing the restriction on the bar’s license.

Hiring security would have cost the bar, “a small, quaint, neighborhood watering hole” that was “never highly profitable,” about $4,000 a month, the suit said.

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The owners said shutting down the bar caused a drop in the property’s value. They alleged that it was by design, so the borough could acquire the bar at a discount for the Public Works Department.

As evidence, they cited an August 2019 NorthJersey.com story about the bar’s closing, in which Kelemen said he hoped the borough would explore buying the property.

“Before anything else happens and innocent people get harmed, as mayor I feel it is only right the town purchase it for DPW use and clean up the area," he said at the time.

As part of the settlement, the borough will pay Marante and Freeman $60,000 and buy the property at 13 East Fort Lee Road for $300,000.

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Attorneys for the borough and the bar owners declined to comment on the agreement. In the settlement, the borough denies the allegations but “believes settling the lawsuit is within the best interests of the municipality.”

Officials said they are still considering how the borough will use the site.

“Our plan would be to expand more options with our DPW facilities, maybe recycling or storage,” Kelemen said. “Whatever we decide will take some time.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Why Bogota NJ wants to buy \closed bar Buddy's Place