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May this club enjoy a speedier recovery
Tiverton Yacht Club members can surely sympathize with their fellow sailors across the bay at Edgewood.
The TYC lost its clubhouse to fire in 2003. The
Edgewood Yacht Club was leveled by fire last week.
Both were historic and beloved waterfront buildings,
family oriented places that were home for
generations to people united by their enthusiasm for
boating. Both fires consumed memories — photographs,
plaques, trophies and records of sailboats and
sailors. And at both places, heartbroken members
vowed to rebuild
Let’s hope the similarities end there.
Nearly eight years after their fire, TYC members are
still homeless.
They meant to rebuild right away, had some insurance
money and hired an architect to draw plans. They
figured permits would be quick and easy to come by —
communities after all don’t add red tape to the list
of hurdles faced by anyone seeking to rebuild after
fire.
They figured wrong. From the day their first
application was filed, they’ve been fought every
step of the way by a few neighbors. Parking, septic
system, boat slips, building size and more have been
the focus of a well-documented and non-stop
onslaught in and out of courtrooms and Town Hall.
Although a recent town council zone ruling may
finally have cleared the way to reconstruction (a
neighbor has filed a 52-point lawsuit challenging
that too), the struggle has drained the club of
money and members. They have carried on but at a
price — the insurance money they had relied on for a
new clubhouse has been consumed by legal costs.
Whether or not neighbors will embrace Edgewood’s
plans to rebuild remains to be seen. If objections
do arise, Cranston and the courts need to consider
those concerns but in so doing must not forget their
obligations to a disaster victim. Something is amiss
when the road back from fire, flood — any calamity
— is blocked by a campaign bent on exhausting the
victim of the resources and will to carry on.
Both clubs lost lovely buildings but the real
tragedy would for the camaraderie that is their true
foundation to wither.
Communities are at their best when they rally to
help a neighbor in hard times.
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