Agave Sports Bar will close for good
Woman died there when drunken driver crashed into outdoor dining area
A San Jose sports bar that long has provoked the ire of city officials, law enforcement and neighbors will close permanently this month.
Under a settlement agreement reached by the city of San Jose, the owners of Agave Sports Bar & Grill at 544 Alma Ave. have agreed to cease operations by Oct. 17 and vacate the property within the subsequent month. The owners also are required to pay the city $15,000 and surrender the business’s Alcoholic Beverage Control license.
The settlement resolves a lawsuit filed by the city in July aimed at getting a judge to declare the sports bar a nuisance and permanently close it. The lawsuit alleged that the bar owners and operators Manuel Andrade Trujillo and Lady Lizcano encouraged prostitutes to solicit customers, allowed patrons to drive away drunk and repeatedly violated COVID-19 public health orders.
“I’m excited and relieved and very happy for the neighbors who live nearby,” said Councilwoman Dev Davis, who represents the area where the establishment is located. “The neighbors have been making complaints for a long time about noise and fights in the parking lot and other suspicions about illegal activity … and it never abated. It always escalated.”
Trujillo and Lizcano also own a second San Jose business named Meli’s Restaurant at 3116 Alum Rock Ave. Although officers allegedly uncovered women soliciting prostitution at Meli’s as well, the owners are not required to close that establishment. The settlement allows them to continue operating Meli’s as long as they
Agave Sports Bar & Grill on Alma Street in San Jose in July. It has agreed to cease operations on Oct. 17. abide by city regulations, allow city code enforcement officers to inspect the business at any time without warning and ensure there is no tinting on the windows.
Agave — which is not operated in association with other similarly named businesses in San Jose and other Bay Area cities — had been on the radar of the San Jose Police Department since December 2020, when officers first conducted an undercover investigation into reports of prostitution at the bar, according to the lawsuit. Since then, officers have arrested at least three women at Agave who agreed to perform sexual acts in exchange for money, and they’ve responded to at least half a dozen reports of fights, narcotics, use of weapons and shootings at Agave, according to the suit.
Then in June, Agave became the site of a deadly crash.
A man who was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine after leaving the bar backed his construction-grade pickup truck into a group of unsuspecting patrons in the bar’s outdoor dining area, killing one woman and injuring two others. Court documents later revealed that a woman was performing oral sex on the suspect moments before the crash.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant racked up $71,750 in civil fines from Santa Clara County for operating as an illicit nightclub in defiance of indoor dining bans and masking mandates. During the pandemic lockdown, members of the local bar industry described the operation to a Bay Area News Group reporter as a speakeasy that provided patrons with elaborate instructions on how to avoid detection by authorities. The restaurant owners later entered into a compliance agreement with the county, reducing their fines to $28,700.
San Jose City Attorney Nora Frimann saidthat the business had “gone too far” and that the issues were “beyond where we could just get compliance.”
“If you’re not operating your business in a safe and appropriate manner and you’re creating a nuisance for the community and require a lot of police and other services, you shouldn’t be operating in San Jose,” she said.
After the deadly crash in June, the restaurant remained open but the owners wiped clean a sign along Alma Avenue that once donned the restaurant’s name and logo. Today, the plain white sign just reads “Now Open.”
Calls by this news organization to Agave and its owners went unanswered Thursday.
San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata said in a news release that he wanted to assure the community that “businesses like this one that engage in illegal and criminal activities will be looked into and investigated.”
“I’m very glad that the City Attorney’s Office and the Police Department could work together to get Agave closed,” Davis said. “I hope all business owners understand the responsibility they have to their customers and also to the surrounding neighborhoods to run their business in a responsible way and to be good neighbors.”