file photo by Boyd Loving
June 10,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The Ridgewood Elks Lodge, a long-standing village foundation established in 1922, has lost its charter recently. Our venture to restructure the lodge has come to an abrupt halt.
We provided countless charitable programs to our community, and many go unnoticed.
The Grand Lodge of Elks came in and took our charter off the wall and changed our locks, with no good reason other than a greedy property grab!
Sadly, our teen Antler volunteer program consisting of 22 youths can no longer function either, through no fault of their own.
We require substantial attorney fees to defend our positions, which we are asking all of our benevolent friends to assist us with.
Any amount donated is very greatly appreciated!
We hope to be back in our building and servicing our community with our wonderful charitable works, but will need your help!
With your kind contributions, we look forward to celebrating with you all on our beloved Fourth of July.
They likely want to bid out your liquor license..whole village has become a disgrace of corporate and municipal back dealing ..sharks always come up for another bite..good luck Elks good neighbors..
Based on facts and reasonable inferences therefrom, it is easy to conclude that this location has been targeted by certain influential people inside and outside Ridgewood as the site of a new performing arts center, and that to bring this goal to fruition, the same people are pulling strings and calling friends and political allies to stir up utter chaos for the local Elks Lodge in order to force it into failure and thus free up the property for development. Crooked!
Mean head elks!
My hunch is 11:52 is correct. It will be interesting to see how many residents actually dig into their pockets and come forth with donations to help save the Elks Lodge. It is after all a legendary part of Ridgewood.
If I am going to donate, I need more information. What does the national organization say is their reason for pulling the charter? Who is the lawsuit against? Is there an precedence for success?
I love the Elks but we need a lot more information and a lot less random speculation in order to get any momentum on this issue.
The lawsuit might fail if Elks doesn’t discover and then name in the lawsuit the true party/parties working toward their demise. If the sole defendant ends up being the Grand Lodge a judge will probably be loathe to intervene.
Just the place for a lot more traffic. People would use the Village Hall/library lot–already filled with sports events attendees and players. Why do we need a performing arts center??????? We do not.
May every committee and project started by the outgoing mayor for his own purposes be squelched.
That building will be the new Ridgewood Library Preforming Arts Center. Taxpayer funded.
The Elks has been under probation for many years. As with other Elks clubs closing, it is for a lack of memberships. Many are combining.
My Elks in Florida has a thriving membership, but as the years went on, it dwindled and was merged with another lodge.
Per the bylines of the Elks, they do have the right to take all assets under that Lodge.
But, and this is a big but, the leadership in Ridgewood may have the rights to the building. As many know, our town hall was the original Elks. Ridgewood gave the the Elks and one stipulation. I think was that it would not be a private club. I believe the Ridgewood Elks is 1 of only 2 lodges in Jersey that is open for non-members.
July 4th was always great there to see the parade.
According to a member, Ridgewood Elks grew membership 43% in the last 3 years and closing the lodge was a “done deal” no matter how well they were doing. The trumped-up charges are being appealed by members in an Elks Grand Forum case and the building ownership is being contested in a Superior Court litigation. The property is owned by a separate Holding Corporation. There is recent legal precedence fighting the Elks Grand Lodge successfully in a similar case – Elks Building Corp. of Norwood vs. BPOE. Austin TX Elks, now “The High Road”, is also successfully suing Grand Lodge for their property.
Money the root of many evils