Lakewood Local

Chris Smith, the owner of Local Fire Protection in Lee's Summit has scammed a Veterans' Association Group in cashing their check for repairs and then saying it will be thousands of dollars more.

Veteran's Board President, Chris Stull said, “We agreed on it at $23,000. Chris Smith said we need half of it upfront, and they’ll order parts, get the hood made, and get it brought in. Smith said that’s going to take 3 to 4 weeks. I said, that’s fine. We gave him half at $11,618. He got that. It’s been cashed,” Stull explained. After those 3-4 weeks passed, Stull claims that the company’s owner, Chris Smith, informed him it would cost thousands more!"

“So then Smith came up here, said that he messed up the estimate. I asked, well, how did you mess up the estimate? He said, Well, I gave you the wrong numbers. It’s going to cost an extra $14,000. That’s not a little mess up, you know.

We’re a nonprofit organization, Stull says and it’s been challenging to get in contact with the owner for answers. This is a total dishonest scam.

(Lakewood Local has no association with Local Fire Protection or Chris Smith).

Story below:

Clay Ray veterans center possibly being scammed for repair costs As if speeding cars flaying onto its roof aren't bad enough, the Clay Veterans Association now faces a new hassle in Excelsior Springs.

We have had lots of e-mails and questions asking about what is going on in our old location at 811 NE Lakewood Boulevard. We have not heard anything directly from the new tenants but here’s what we do know:

Caramarie Gibson Zollars, a local real estate agent, and fantastic former customer of ours at Lakewood Local, has applied for and been granted a liquor license under her company HBIC Capital. We wanted to share the news to all of you because it will be great to have a former customer opening up the bar. Also you don’t see a lot of female owned businesses in this industry!! We are also hopeful that some of our old staff will be helping with the new bar. We know that they don’t have a name yet because they wanted to call it “Local” but there already is a “Local” in Grain Valley and also Local is a derivative of Lakewood Local so they can’t use that because it is a trademark infringement of both names so we will see what they come up with for a name. How about “Caramarie’s Pub?” That sounds great!

We were contacted by the state agency in their investigation of the new application for the license but we had no information but they have taken Caramarie at her word in all her disclosures in her liquor license application that Chris Smith is not involved in the operation of the bar and will not have any financial interest because he is legally not able to so because that’s what got the last person who applied for a license there in trouble and got the license denied. It is quite ominous because the state is watching so when Smith tells his buddies he is the owner but tells others he is not and he is only a “consultant” to get around the law, this place might not last long and that will be sad. But we are hoping it is all on the up and up and Smith won’t cause Caramarie to lose her license. Fingers crossed.

(Still waiting to get the payment on all of the equipment but we weren’t pushing it while it was empty but we are sure Chris Smith will do the right thing and pay for it.)

We wish Caramarie and her new staff the best of luck in opening up those walls and the patio to good times again. Go see her when she opens up later this month and tell her you support her! She will be up there a lot because an owner of a place has to be on site a lot for it to be successful so she will need your encouragement. We need that place to be open!!!!!!! It looks like there may just be life again to our community pub after nine long months of promising an opening! Happy Day!

We wanted to check in with our Facebook family and customers. Hope all is well and we are so sorry to see our old spot has not been opened. We have been asked so many times about what is happening with the location and about the rumors and all, so we do want to take the opportunity to set some rumors straight about the location where Lakewood Local used to be.

1. There will not be another business called Lakewood Local. If a new business opens up, it will be a different name, different company, different people etc. and it will have no affiliation with the former Lakewood Local.

2. The reason any new business hasn't opened has nothing to do with Lakewood Local, the former owners, or any of the former staff. We have heard from dozens of people that Chris Cardello and Chris Smith, or “Smitty” as he calls himself, have been lying to people saying all sorts of reasons why the new business isn’t open and blaming Lakewood Local. It just isn’t true. Lakewood Local closed and has nothing to do with anything any other business is doing and certainly isn’t doing anything to prohibit them from opening. We were hopeful they would already be open and our former staff could get their jobs back.

3. We even offered to partner with them to do a Christmas Pop Up bar so the staff could have jobs and the neighborhood had somewhere to celebrate but the new business declined to do so.

4. The truth is that a new bar has not opened because their liquor license was denied by the state of Missouri. If you live in Lakewood and know Chris Smith, you know that for months he has been telling anyone who will listen that he was buying the bar and then telling everyone that he did buy the bar and that he owns it. However, the fact is that Chris Smith cannot hold a liquor license or have any financial interest in a bar because he has a LIFETIME BAN from ever holding a liquor license in the state of Missouri and he cannot be involved in any bar.

Even though he has never been quiet about his involvement in the bar, he asked Chris Cardello to apply for the license and lie to the state of Missouri that “Smitty” was just the landlord and had no involvement in the bar. Not sure how stupid these guys thought law enforcement was when Chris Smith couldn’t keep his mouth shut but it’s no secret that there was an investigation by the Missouri Division of Alcohol and To***co because Chris Cardello applied for a license and lied to them that Smitty was just “the landlord.” However, the agents that investigated have investigated Chris Smith for years and they know his past illegal activity and they knew that was not true as they interviewed dozens of people from former staff, to community members, to Chris Smith’s own golfing buddies who all said they were told directly from Chris Smith that HE owns the bar and HE was going to run it. Cardello lied to the State and said Smith had no financial interest in the bar but Smith even had it written in the lease that he got a portion of the sales from the new bar. Even when given the chance to tell the truth, the State found that Cardello continued to lie that Smith had nothing to do with the bar when they knew it was not true. The State found that with all of the deceit, Cardello did not have the moral character to hold a license.

With all of the Cardello lies and Chris Smith’s illegal involvement and after a thorough and professional investigation, on March 11, 2025, the State of Missouri denied the license.

In the 11 page denial letter from the State of Missouri, it reads:
“Based on its investigation, the Division has determined Mr. Cardello has not been truthful about the nature of his relationship with Mr. Smith, nor about Mr. Smith’s seemingly significant and likely financial interest involvement in the reopening of the bar from his application. These misrepresentations and omission of material facts falls short of the standard for good moral character required to obtain a liquor license. Information obtained by the Division from multiple sources also support the Division’s determination that the instant application is a subterfuge by Mr. Cardello made for the benefits of Mr. Smith, which further serves to demonstrate a lack of moral character disqualifying Mr. Cardello from obtaining a license.”

Now we hear that Chris Smith is trying to “sell” the bar for an outlandish amount of money so we will see what happens. We don’t want to get in the gossip mill in the neighborhood but when our name kept coming up, we felt it was important to set the record straight.

Remember, when we closed, we were promised by the new owners that they were only going to be closed for a few days AND we were promised that all the staff would keep their jobs. It has now been almost seven months and they haven’t opened anything and the staff are still without jobs. It is sad because that place is a community center as well as a local watering hole and we had hoped it would be open by now and the staff would be back to work. Anyway, we just wanted to publicly inform everyone about the truth of what is going on. I guess we all can just stay tuned.

Happy Halloween! Our treat for you is every type of bottled beer is only three dollars......all the time. We're making happy hour ALL THE TIME!!
Come have a cold bottle of beer with us today and tomorrow!