Moe’s to Close and Be Replaced by…Navada?

A local bar owner has plans in place for a new, fancier joint to replace one of the neighborhood’s most popular watering holes.

Qaseem Muhammad said that he will open a new bar called Navada in the Lafayette Avenue space now occupied by Moe’s at the end of May.

“The neighborhood is changing, a lot of people are coming from BAM, and the [Barclays] arena is coming, we have to step it up a bit,” said Muhammad, who owns the bar Hideout on Adelphi Street. “We’re going to serve some more cocktails, wines, get some appetizers in there.”

Muhammad spoke about Navada — which he would run with his partner, Calvin Clark, who owns Langston on Atlantic Avenue — as if it were a done deal.

But a manager at told a different story.

“No one has signed a lease, negotiations are still going on,” said Butch Johnson, a manager at Moe’s. “The landlord is playing both sides against each other.”

Efforts to reach the landlord, James McDowell, were to no avail.

But Johnson confirmed that the first week of May would reveal the fate of the bar at S. Portland Avenue.

“If we’re here on May 1 that means we signed a new lease, if we’re closed, then it’s for good,” he said.

The popular dive has been in limbo since late last year, when McDowell said he would not renew the bar’s lease after negotiations with Moe’s owners fell apart. Then the bar managed to secure an extension in February that kept the taps flowing for another two months.

If Moe’s does close, Muhammad said that Navada would have some key differences — not the least of which would be an entirely new bar.

“We’re going to lighten it up a bit. I don’t like that ‘red light district’-look that it has. People want to be able to see inside when they walk by during the day,” Muhammad said.

“We encourage all the regulars to keep coming through,” he added. “It’s still going to be a neighborhood bar.”