Slow recovery (continued) BY BRIAN C. JONES

NO ONE SEEMS to have a grasp of how many businesses will have to undertake major renovations to meet the new code.

Overall, the state liquor control office says there are 1011 nightclubs, restaurants, and bars with liquor licenses, and another 272 private establishments with club licenses. The state Department of Health inspects 1276 food-serving establishments that seat 50 or more customers. Just how many of these fall under new mandates of the fire code is unclear.

But Anthony Costanzo III, owner of Rhode Island Billiards Bar & Bistro, in North Providence, is worried that the new regulations will require him to install an $80,000 sprinkler system. "I can’t do that," Costanzo says of the huge project. "I might as well shut down."

He questions whether his operation should be under the sprinkler rules. In terms of square-footage, Rhode Island Billiards can hold 280 people, well above the 150 mark for sprinklers. But Costanzo says the hall’s 16 billiards tables take up much of the space and are positioned far enough apart to give 64 players plenty of elbowroom. On a good night, the place draws a crowd of less than 110, including customers at his two bars.

Costanzo says the new law seems to be lumping everyone into the same category. But he contends that his operation differs in a lot of ways from that of the Station, including how he treats his workers. "I employ 18 people," he says. "Unlike the Station, I pay my full-time employees benefits, and I pay workers’ compensation. These are things I do. Why are you putting me in the bowl with those people?"

Affected in a different way is the Ocean Mist in the Matunuck section of South Kingstown. Owner Kevin Finnegan estimates he’ll lose $400,000 during his busiest season — Memorial Day to Labor Day — because the capacity of his nightclub was dropped from about 300 to 187 customers soon after the Station fire. That’s meant turning away hundreds of customers and not being able to bring in national bands on a Saturday nights, scheduling them instead on Mondays, when the acts don’t require larger fees. "It’s just empty," Finnegan says of how the club looks with its reduced numbers.

Fire inspectors ordered the reduction as a precaution, pending improvements — including installing a sprinkler system and probably adding two more doors to the three that the club already has, Finnegan says. He isn’t complaining. But he’s received estimates for sprinklers ranging from $15,800 to $43,000. And that’s on top of $32,500 spent on other improvements. What concerns Finnegan is that the rules outlining what’s needed have been delayed, and he doesn’t want to undertake renovations until the requirements are clear. "It’s just that business is used to moving fast and quick, and government is moving slow," he concludes.

Another club operator, Randy Hien, of the Living Room, on Rathbone Street in Providence, says renovations aren’t his problem. He installed a $50,000 sprinkler system 10 years ago and expects to meet other code requirements. What’s affected him is a disastrous drop in attendance. Parents are keeping his younger customers away, and also performers in some bands.

He remembers the fury of one parent a week after the Station fire, when her teenage daughter went to the Living Room for a concert without her permission. In fact, it was a quiet night, and there was only a tiny crowd of about 30 people in a club that Hien says can hold 350. "This woman read her daughter the riot act right in front of all her friends, and it was all about the Station fire. She was freaked out," he says.

Before the Station fire, Hien been close to paying off the mortgage for his building, but has since had to refinance, and watch late fees spiral upwards. "I haven’t been able to make a payment since the fire," he confesses.

Hien, in the club business since 1975, says he knows why parents are worried. He has five children, he coaches an all-star Little League team in Lincoln. His wife is a school teacher. But he’s worried about the lack of crowds and the future of live music.

"We are dangerously close to losing the local scene," he says.

CERTAINLY, NOT EVERY nightclub and restaurant will be knocked out by the Station-inspired reforms.

One of the state’s premier rock clubs, Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in downtown Providence, did not have to shut when Carcieri ordered a sweeping series of inspections after the fire. But owner Rich Lupo says he did have to spend $50,000 to comply with two relatively minor adjustments. The code required that "panic" hardware be installed on exit doors, so they couldn’t be locked from the inside. Lupo’s doors were never locked, but the retrofits cost more than $20,000. And it cost him thousands to change the distance of the sprinkler heads from the ceiling.

Lupo doesn’t think that places like his, with a capacity of 1500, will see much change under the new rules, because they already operate under tough rules, and he praises City of Providence inspectors for being rigorous even before the Station fire. "Our place was perfectly safe before the fire and is incredibly perfectly safe now," Lupo says. "The impact will be more severe on small business owners."

Bob Burke is owner of the Pot Au Feu restaurant and the Federal Reserve, a restaurant that has a nightclub license. Burke says that early in his career he was an arson insurance adjuster, and saw first-hand the gruesome results of a fire: handprints on door jambs of building when occupants couldn’t get out. "The fire marshals are really tough, and it’s fine that they are really tough," Burke says. "They need to go home and be able to sleep," knowing that they did their best to prevent tragedies, he says. But Burke says he understands the worry of business owners faced with big bills.

The state’s largest nightclub owner is Michael Kent, who operates four clubs in a Pine Street building called The Complex, in addition to the NV at the Strand, Finnegan’s Draft House, America, Periwinkles, Olives, The Art Bar, and others here and elsewhere on the East Coast. Kent says he’s tried to meet or exceed codes, and that he welcomes the rollout of new standards, even though he’s spent $250,000 so far and could pay $500,000 or more to bring all of his clubs to Rhode Island standards. "I intend, whatever these Rhode Island regulations are, my intention is to put them in all my facilities from Massachusetts to Florida," he says. "We are not saying just in Rhode Island — these events can happen anywhere."

The capacity of The Complex, Kent says, was cut from about 1000 to 750 when an early round of inspections found that sprinklers needed upgrading, along with other deficiencies. According to the Providence Journal, when Kent complained loudly about a Providence building inspector, he was charged with disorderly conduct, a count later dismissed.

Kent says he has spent thousands to upgrade The Complex, and that with three nightclub-going children of his own, he’s determined to operate safely — and is taking steps to install sprinklers in the only two of his Providence clubs, Olives and Finnegan’s, without the devices. "It will be done long, long before we are required to do it, no matter what we have to do," he says, referring to the new code requirements.

Dale Venturini, of the Hospitality Association, says the charge that businesses don’t care about safety haunts owners. "One guy said to me: ‘How could someone say that I don’t care about the cost of human life?’ Of course I care. But I care about opening my business and taking care of eight or nine employees. I care about them and their livelihoods and whether they have jobs.’ "

A non-expert who has followed the development of the new law with keen interest is Victoria L. Potvin.

Potvin had gone to the Station with four friends, and was near the stage when it ignited. She and her friends headed for the door. But she was pushed away and onto the floor. Her friend, Missy Minor, was behind her, holding onto her shirt. "She picked me up and threw me toward the window, and someone on the outside pulled me up and over the window," Potvin says. But she thinks "the extra few seconds" that Minor spent in helping her resulted in Missy suffering serious burns to her hands and legs.

Potvin’s own injuries included smoke inhalation, second-degree burns on her hands and arms and singed hair. She was treated for about six hours in a hospital. But two of her friends spent months in hospitals, and another, Keith LaPierre, died.

A single mother of a 10-year-old daughter, Potvin went back to work as an area manager for a mortgage company a week after her escape. But it was months before she emerged from the shock of the fire. She and other survivors started The Station Family Fund to fill in gaps left by other funds, and have raised more than $25,000 so far.

"I think it’s a great thing," she says of the new code, particularly the removal of the grandfather clause that had allowed the Station to operate without sprinklers. Sprinklers may not have doused the fire, she says, but they would have given all of those who died time to get out.

It’s "unfortunate" that some businesses might fail because they won’t be able to afford the reforms, Potvin says. But she feels no cost is too great to prevent a repeat. "I don’t think $50,000, $100,000, or $1 million is too much money to save a human life," she says. "If some of those laws had been in place, you and I would not be having this conversation."

CAHIR HAS ALMOST NO memory of the weeks following the fire. He recalls establishing a Michael J. Gonsalves memorial fund at RIC for scholarships He remembers sitting at a computer in the Journal newsroom, writing his friend’s profile, tears streaming down his face while his colleagues gave him a respectful berth.

He delivered a funeral eulogy in which he pledged to instill in his own sons’ Gonsalves’s qualities of "determination, generosity, and loyalty." In a bizarre episode right before the service, a woman plunked herself in the first pew with family members, claiming Gonsalves had proposed to her three times. Cahir told her if Gonsalves had planned to propose, he would have known about it before she did. The woman slipped to the back of the church.

The pallbearers carried the casket out of St. Ambrose Church in Lincoln, and up a hill to the church’s cemetery. Cahir stared into the hole, which seemed to him deep and dark, and he felt the finality of what had happened.

At night, he’d sometimes cry himself to sleep. When he did sleep, there would be horrific dreams. One dream was based on the witness account that Gonsalves had made it out of the club, but had run back inside to aid friends. Cahir tried to tackle him, but the athletic Gonsalves would fight his way in anyway.

Cahir tried to work, but he was finding it impossible to sleep, so he went to a doctor to beg for sleeping pills. The doctor immediately ordered him to stop working, prescribed a regimen of anti-depressants and told him that he couldn’t return to his job without the approval of a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Cahir used to tell Gonsalves that he considered mental health workers "voodoo" doctors. But in sessions with a clinical psychologist, he found that he could talk about the disaster. Finally, he went back to work, and felt good doing so.

He became a passionate voice on a victims’ discussion group conducted on the Internet. The forum’s moderator suggested he meet a group hoping to preserve the Station site as a memorial. The group asked Cahir to be its president.

AN ENERGETIC MAN, Cahir soon was on the phone or sending letters to people at the Rhode Island Foundation, state government, other survivor groups, including Potvin’s organization. The goal is simple. "We think definitely there should be a permanent memorial on the site," Cahir says. "We shouldn’t be building a McDonald’s or a Jiffy Lube there."

Obviously, one of the sensitive aspects is that other than organizing themselves as The Station Fire Memorial Foundation, the members have no official standing. They don’t own the site, which is held by a real estate company.

But nobody else seemed to be doing what obviously had to be done, Cahir says. To raise money, the group plans some activities, including a yearbook-style publication. Cahir envisions having a page for each of the 100 victims, with the content supplied by the families or other survivors.

In a recent letter to the West Warwick Town Council and other officials, Cahir said he understands there will be a long legal process, and that it may be necessary to buy the land. "We do not wish the site of our loved ones’ tragic demise to become a political football, nor a burden to the state’s taxpayers," he said. And the foundation is gaining support.

Victoria Potvin is among those who have erected crosses at the fire site, and she supports the work of the memorial group to preserve it as a sacred place. "It should never be anything but a memorial," Potvin says. "It should be a place to go and reflect."

House Speaker William J. Murphy is from West Warwick and said soon after the fire that the site should be preserved as a memorial. Cahir seems energized by all of this, as if the effort allows him to talk more easily about the fire and his best friend. He seems confident there will be a memorial.

What remains a struggle is making his peace with the place where the Station once stood. "I need to acclimate myself to actually going and being on the site," he says.

In the days before publication of this article, Cahir agreed to be photographed at the location.

On the 20th of each month — the anniversary of the fire — the Reverend Susan Asselin, the memorial foundation’s vice president, has been leading services at the scene of the disaster in West Warwick.

Cahir resolved to go to the one scheduled this week, on Wednesday, August 20. Maybe that would do it.

Brian C. Jones can be reached at brijudy@ids.net