The alcohol permits for He’s Not Here will be suspended for 21 days and the bar will be fined $15,000 under an offer in compromise ratified by the North Carolina Alcohol Beverage Control Commission.
The agreement was ratified during the board’s monthly meeting on Wednesday.
Commission chair James Gardner says he was reluctant to go along with the agreement.
“This particular location has had a bad history,” he says. “And I hope, for their sake, we don’t see them back in front of this commission again. Because I don’t think the results will be the same.”
He’s Not Here was facing three separate charges on Wednesday of serving alcohol to underage customers.
He’s Not Here was investigated for allegedly serving alcohol to a group of underage patrons – including Chandler Kania – on July 19. Later that night, Kania drove the wrong way on I-85 for at least six miles, according to law enforcement, before crashing head-on into another vehicle. Three of the four passengers in the second car, including a six-year-old girl, were killed.
Kania’s blood-alcohol content the night of the crash was a .17, twice the legal limit to drive in North Carolina, according to records.
The original offer in compromise for He’s Not Here was that the longtime Chapel Hill bar surrender all alcohol permits. Gardner says that he was in favor of the original agreement rather than the watered-down final offer.
“When we first of all came up with the revoking the permit, I thought that’s what should have been done,” he says. “But as we got into it and talked about the various ramifications of going before administrative judges, we decided that right now that we would have a suspension of 21 days and $5,000 fines for each offense.
“Do I think that that was what I personally would have liked? No.”
After He’s Not Here refused to sign the original offer in compromise, the case was set to be heard before an administrative law judge later this month.
“We looked at the case that ALE had brought before us,” Garnder says. “And we always have to make the decision, you know, can we win that case? We think we could have. But the judgment this time was that this is the best we could do.”
Gardner says he is hopeful the new punishment against He’s Not Here will change the bar’s way of doing business.
“In the past, they’ve been fined numerous times,” he says. “They have not had the permit suspended and that’s the next step into what we’re now beginning to look at.
“It doesn’t seem like just fining somebody is enough.”
Gardner says that the problem of serving underage customers extends beyond He’s Not Here.
“It troubles me a great deal that people who have permits do not meet their responsibility of underage sale,” he says. “We have a terrible situation in this state. We’ve talked about it before. We lose one life per week. It’s costing the state of North Carolina over $1 billion per year.”
It was clear Gardner wanted to send a message to He’s Not Here and other establishments that had, to use his words, “numerous violations.”
“They better not come back before us again,” he says, “and I hope they clearly understand that.”
The 21-day suspension for He’s Not Here is contingent on the bar paying the full $15,000 in fines; the bar could face a longer suspension if the decision is made to not pay the fines. A call to the registered agent representing SWDP Restaurant LLC, which owns He’s Not Here, was not returned on Wednesday.
If the bar pays the fines by February 5, the suspension will begin February 12.
Kania is scheduled to appear in court on charges including three counts of second-degree murder in March. He is currently under house arrest at his parents’ home in Asheboro after posting a $1 million bond.
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