Digital Extra: The Station Fire

The Station Fire Memorial Foundation begins fundraising to preserve the West Warwick nightclub site, where personal remembrances and legal issues now vie for attention.

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, August 30, 2004

BY ZACHARY R. MIDER
Journal Staff Writer

WEST WARWICK -- Eighteen months after a fire leveled The Station nightclub and killed 100 people, homespun monuments erected by grieving families and well-wishers are all that stand at the corner lot at 211 Cowesett Ave.

People involved with the site say they don't expect that to change anytime soon.

With a walk-a-thon planned for next month, the Station Fire Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded to build a permanent memorial, is starting to raise money actively for the first time.

But even if the group raises enough to buy the land and build a memorial there, the titanic legal battle over liability for the fire threatens to block the project.

The brothers who operated the club, Jeffrey A. and Michael A. Derderian, have not yet terminated their lease on the property, according to a lawyer for the landowner, Triton Realty Limited Partnership.

Lawyers for the brothers could not be reached. Daniel P. McKiernan, the lawyer for Triton, said his client and the brothers are involved in a dispute about insurance money for the building and its contents.

Triton has expressed interest in donating the land. But even if the lease is terminated, Triton may be prevented from conveying the land to the memorial group, because of objections raised by plaintiffs in wrongful-death suits against Triton.

"It would only take one party to raise this issue to cause trouble," McKiernan said. "Unless there's more or less unanimous consent, or some court order binding on the plaintiffs, the situation will remain muddied."

FOUR DAYS after the fire, House Speaker William J. Murphy pledged to lead the effort to build a memorial there. The West Warwick Democrat formed a group calling itself the Station Night Club Property Procurement Fund.

Murphy's group said it could raise money equal to the value of the land in private donations, then set it aside in a special account. Triton could donate the land to the Property Procurement Fund. And if Triton was found liable in the wrongful-death suits, the set-aside money could be used to pay the plaintiffs.

But Murphy no longer wants his group to procure the land, according to his aide, Patrick T. Burke. The Property Procurement Fund dissolved in June, and the speaker is now throwing his support behind the Station Fire Memorial Foundation, Burke said.

"He thought it was in the best interest of all that we all work together to achieve the goal, to make sure that land is turned into a memorial," Burke said.

Kimberly Jalette, president of the Station Fire Memorial Foundation, said her group intends to raise the money to buy the land and build a memorial there. It is unclear how much the land is worth, she said. The most recent town assessment valued the two-thirds-acre parcel at $107,900.

The foundation has little money now, Jalette said, as it has been deferring to other groups, such as the Station Family Fund, whose proceeds go directly to the fire's victims. "We purposely stepped aside for this whole first year."

Now, however, the foundation is beginning to focus on fundraising, with the walk-a-thon Sept. 18. The group is also publishing a cookbook, expected to be ready by Christmas.

Jalette said the foundation will eventually hold a competition for memorial designs. There will be a few basic criteria that each design must meet:

Each person who died as a result of the fire will be memorialized by name, Jalette said. Those who survived the fire will be recognized in the memorial, but not named, she said. She said some survivors have asked for personalized memorials, while others never wanted to be identified.

"It's really tough to be sensitive to everyone," she said, "but there is absolutely no divide in our minds between survivors and families."

There will be an interactive element -- a "living kiosk," featuring survivors' stories.

The memorial will recognize the rescue efforts of the first responders.

It will incorporate parts of the temporary memorials that stand at the site now.

WHILE THE foundation prepares to raise money for a memorial, the Town of West Warwick has been grappling with the practical problems raised by the orphaned site.

"We're getting many phone calls from neighbors," said Jeanne-Marie DiMasi, Town Council president. "They don't like what's there now. They feel that it's very messy, and not at all agreeable to the neighborhood. . . .

"The town's not quite sure how we should handle this. We can't just ignore it because we're getting so many complaints. . . . I would like to maybe plant some grass and clean it up."

Town Manager Wolfgang Bauer said any action the town takes at the site might backfire. "The people think it's a shrine, and that you're [messing] around with their loved ones," he said. Although neighbors see it as disorganized, he said, "sometimes beauty's in the eyes of the beholder."

Given the legal complications, seizing the land by eminent domain is not an option for the town, Bauer said. "I think all of us are willing to help -- if we figured out what to do."

The walk-a-thon is planned for Goddard Park, in Warwick, on Sept. 18. Registration begins at 8 a.m., and the walk will be from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information, visit the foundation's Web site at http://www.stationfirememorialfoundation.org/

Staff writer Zachary R. Mider can be reached at 277-8068 or zmider [at] projo.com