By David Slade
The Post and Courier
CHARLESTON, S.C. — The site of the Sofa Super Store, where nine Charleston firefighters died fighting a blaze in 2007, would be redeveloped as a memorial, a training and educational facility and a new Fire Department headquarters, under a plan recommended to City Council on Tuesday.
The conceptual plan, with no price tag attached, was laid out by some of the 28 members of a commission formed by the city to memorialize what was one of the nation’s worst losses of firefighter lives in decades.
Mayor Joe Riley said “what the commission has put together could not be more appropriate for this hallowed site.”
The commission’s recommendation calls for a gardenlike outdoor memorial with individual markers for each of the fallen firefighters.
A design plan shows the individual markers positioned in roughly the same locations where the firefighters’ bodies were found in the ruins of the Sofa Super Store.
The center of the memorial would feature a main element, possibly the emblem of the fire service, a Maltese cross.
The concept resembles a plan presented in December by Fire Capt. Jack deTournillon.
DeTournillon’s plan also had called for a building on the site, and a
memorial on the spot where the firefighters died inside the sofa store.
The commission’s recommendation calls for a large, new building that would surround the memorial garden on three sides, blocking out the noise of Savannah Highway traffic and the views of a used-car dealership and a gas station on either side of the property.
The building would be 25,000 to 32,000 square feet, with space for firefighter training, public education programs and a new headquarters for the Charleston Fire Department.
“We believe this is a great opportunity for the (fire) chief to move over there and for that to be an administration facility,” said Jimmy Bailey, chairman of the commission.
The city previously borrowed nearly $1.9 million to buy the 2.5-acre site at 1807 Savannah Highway and has set aside $90,000 to pay for design plans, but there’s no funding in place for the memorial itself.
Bailey said he expects private donations will play a role.
Commission member Dinos Liollio, an architect, said designing the building and memorial could take a year.
The Sofa Super Store fire led to a shake-up of the Charleston Fire Department as a series of studies in the aftermath of the blaze highlighted problems with training, procedures and equipment.
Statewide legislation aimed at creating incentives for sprinkler systems and changes in the way Charleston Water System charges customers for sprinkler lines also followed the fire.
The firefighters, now known as the Charleston 9, were: Bradford Baity, Michael Benke, Melvin Champaign, James Drayton, Michael French, William Hutchinson, Mark Kelsey, Louis Mulkey and Brandon Thompson.
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