WARWICK -- Under the new fire codes set to take effect next year, it's clear to brothers Steve and David Lombardi that their business, the 1025 Club in Johnston, is going to need sprinklers.
And it's clear to them that it won't be easy.
The Lombardis have estimated that sprinklers will cost them $200,000, between the construction costs and the disruption to their banquet room business.
The General Assembly rewrote the state fire codes last summer, in the months after The Station nightclub in West Warwick burned down and killed 100 people. The Station did not have sprinklers to put out the fire ignited by a rock band's pyrotechnic display.
Under the new law, nightclubs with a capacity between 150 and 300 people will need sprinklers by mid-2006. Larger places of public assembly, such as Lombardi's 1025 Club, will need sprinklers by mid-2005. But the Lombardis are concerned about another, more immediate deadline -- July 1, 2004 -- the date the law reduces their maximum occupancy by 20 percent until they install the sprinkler system.
That doesn't leave a lot of time, they say, to arrange financing, hire architects and engineers and complete the work.
"We have weddings booked three years out," Steve Lombardi said. "We can't say the 1025 is going to close for a month to put in sprinklers." The brothers expect they will have to do part of the construction, then stop and clean up, hold an event, and then do a little more work.
The Rhode Island Hospitality & Tourism Association is also concerned with the deadlines, said Dale Venturini, the group's president and CEO. The association gathered several dozen of its members yesterday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for a briefing on the new fire codes.
Are the deadlines realistic?
"Only time will tell," she said. Nobody knows if fire-safety companies will have enough time to physically complete all the work that will be required in Rhode Island in the next three years, she said.
Venturini said her membership is anxious to begin preparing for the new codes. "I'm not hearing [from business owners] that they don't want to do this," she said yesterday. "I'm hearing, 'What do I have to do? And how do I do it?' "
The Small Business Administration has organized lenders who are willing to give low-interest loans to business owners who need to invest in fire safety under the new codes. But that's still another expense, and it's not the kind of business investment that increases patronage or revenue, Steve Lombardi said.
Added David Lombardi, "I think we need a little more help."
The business owners yesterday got an update on the code requirements from representatives of the Fire Safety Code Board of Appeal and Review.
In addition to the sprinkler provisions, the new codes, which go into effect next February, will also require local or municipally connected fire alarms -- depending on the venue -- in places of public assembly. The law contains several other requirements for nightclubs, such as more fire extinguishers, exit signs at floor level that will be easier to see when a room fills with smoke, and alarms that automatically cut off music and turn on the lights if there is an emergency.
"The critical component right now is getting the information out there" to business owners who need to learn the new requirements, said Venturini.
