CROWN POINT | As soon as Buddy and Pal's Place's doors opened, Dan Pittman was inside, his tattoo-covered arm propped against the gleaming bar.
The Cedar Lake resident has been the first customer at every Buddy and Pal's. He continued that tradition at the grand opening of the bar's new Crown Point location Monday morning.
"I've got my spot, it's just at the opposite end now," Pittman said. "It's a good bar, good people."
Buddy and Pal's owner Tim Heidbreder said the bar's old location at 499 E. Summit St. was stifled by limited parking and entertainment.
The new building, farther east on Summit Street in Millennium Park, was built with more in mind.
Buddy and Pal's has a longer bar, with 13 flat-screen TVs lining either side. It has room for 272 people in the main room, with high open ceilings, more tables and a spacious marble dance floor.
Heidbreder said everything in the bar was built with steel, masonry and concrete, in keeping with the industrial park. The walls are brick and have some blocks etched with the signature Buddy and Pal's frogs.
The floors are acid-stained a warm apricot.
Heidbreder also used his vacations in Costa Rica and Panama as inspiration for the new Buddy and Pal's Dos Amigos Cantina.
The cantina is a three-season room with a metal roof, shutters and seating for 107 people. The room is centered by brickwork set off with the head of a real bull killed in a bullfight. The bull is flanked by hats, pottery and plants with a Central American theme.
Heidbreder said the new location will include the same ambiance and atmosphere his customers enjoyed at the old bar. There will be no cover to get in, free entertainment and the price of drinks won't go up to pay for it.
Buddy and Pal's regulars were already pulling up stools at the bar or grabbing a table for lunch a few minutes after it opened Monday morning.
With 210 parking spaces instead of the 38 at the old building, Heidbreder said he believes Buddy and Pal's will be the No. 1 bar in northern Indiana from state line to state line.
"Am I excited? Yeah, I'm excited," he said, stopping to shake a customer's hand. "Am I tired? Yeah I'm tired."
