Memorial foundation seeks ownership of Station fire siteRemembrance November 14,
2007 4:39:51 PM
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More than four years after the Station night club fire disaster, the site of the 2003 tragedy remains a makeshift memorial. Weather-beaten wooden crosses dot the rectangular patch of grass where the West Warwick nightclub once stood. A few rusty folding chairs and small benches provide the only places to sit. The space looks loved, but worn; sacred, but rundown.
A group of friends and family members of the 100 people who died as a result of the fire don’t want the site to remain this way. Banding together as the Station Fire Memorial Foundation, they’re actively planning a permanent memorial at the site, complete with a design competition and a detailed project timeline. The one thing eluding the group, however, is the actual ownership of the property.
The land is still owned by Triton Realty, which owned it when the fire took place. According to Jessica Garvey, the foundation’s president, her organization has a legal representative working to obtain the property from Triton, but nothing can happen before the resolution of civil suits against the realty company.
As far as Garvey knows, no one else has expressed interest in buying the land. While Triton’s listed telephone number is out of service and representatives of the company could not be reached for comment, Garvey expresses confidence that “the Station Fire Memorial Foundation will eventually procure the Station property and will be able to build the memorial on the site.”
According to tax and zoning records at West Warwick Town Hall, the property at 211 Cowesett Ave. is valued at $72,400 and zoned for business use, with annual taxes of $1,489.99. The Station Fire Memorial Foundation is raising money to buy the property if it has to, and members of the group expect that most of the costs associated with building the memorial will be donated.
Only three people submitted proposals for the foundation’s design competition, which closed August 31.
A fourth proposal was added a few months later by Robert Boyle, a surveyor who drew up a design back in 2003 and hung it in his office. Boyle had no idea what to do with the plan until he stumbled across an article about the competition and wasn’t impressed by the other submissions.
His design shows a granite wall built in a zigzag design to form 20 “faces.” Each face features five of the 100 victims’ names. Boyle says he didn’t submit his design to the SFMF competition, but just drove his framed picture over to Jessica Garvey’s home and told her she could do whatever she wanted to with it.
Garvey says the foundation will accept Boyle’s design, even if his drawing skipped a few of the competition guidelines. The other three designers submitted their proposals anonymously, in keeping with the guidelines.
According to the Kent County Daily Times, RISD students submitted one proposal. Another was submitted by a landscape architect. The foundation will vote on the submissions and announce the winner on February 20, 2008, the fifth anniversary of the conflagration.
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