A Nightclub on Fire Island, Destroyed by Fire, Is on Track for a Rebirth

This Memorial Day weekend, visitors to the Fire Island Pines will find the prominent waterfront site long occupied by the Pavilion, the island’s legendary dance club and social hub, to be little more than a forlorn lot containing sand, ashen debris and memories of giddier times.

But the owners of the club, which was gutted by a fire in November, have vowed to rebuild the Pavilion, an emotional touchstone for generations of gay men who found liberation, and sometimes romance, on its cavernous dance floor. They have released plans for the new building, which they say will reopen in time for the 2013 season.

The re-envisioned Pavilion, starting with a welcome bar at dockside, is to host the traditional summer bacchanalia that made it famous, but, in a sign of the changing social and political climate, it will also become a festive venue for weddings for the men who travel to the Pines each summer.

As if in apology for not reviving the Pavilion in time for this season, its owners will festoon the plywood fence surrounding the site with vibrant banners depicting the Pavilion of the future, a boardwalk-inspired structure with open terraces, multiple bars, a gym and a retractable roof, designed by the architectural firm HWKN of Manhattan, which describes its philosophy as “anti-egoism architecture.”

Foundation work is to begin next month; by midsummer, the owners hope, a usable deck will occupy the club’s footprint. But the new 8,000-square-foot club will not resemble the one that burned.

Matthias Hollwich of HWKN, the architect in charge of designing the Pavilion, recalled first dancing there in the summer of 1992 as a student from Munich: “I came ashore with no summer share, danced until 6 in the morning and took a ferry back to the mainland,” he said.

“It was obvious that this place was the social engine of the Pines,” he added. “It was all about freedom and fun.”

His angular design, with wooden grids framing the views from the many terraces, is airy, even in a literal sense: he estimated that more than a third of the building would be naturally ventilated. The upstairs dance club is to have a roof that opens on starry nights.

“We will make a smarter building,” Mr. Hollwich said.

“This design,” said Matt Blesso, the chief executive of Blesso properties, the site’s developer, “manages to be over-the-top bold, very modern and yet feels summery and beachy.”

“The community,” he added, “deserves an iconic nightclub, and believe me, if we hadn’t rebuilt the Pavilion, there would have been community uproar.”

“For everyone who ever danced in the Pavilion, it is a symbol of gay freedom,” said Jon Wilner, whose real estate firm, Island Properties of the Pines, was one of several small businesses in the Pavilion building destroyed in the fire on Nov. 14.

“Long before it was chic to be gay,” Mr. Wilner said, “long before governors and mayors went to gay weddings, this is where we went to be accepted. The Pavilion is a symbol: it’s like our Eiffel Tower.”

The day after the fire, he said, Andrew Kirtzman, who headed the group that bought the club in 2010, promised it would be rebuilt. The fire also consumed the adjacent LaFountaine building, which housed the popular Sip-n-Twirl club; it is on a reconstruction fast track for a July reopening.

After the fire, some in the area feared that Mr. Blesso and Mr. Kirtzman’s group, FIP Ventures, which spent $17 million for control of 80 percent of the commercial properties in the Pines, would not replace the club. But the outpouring of local sentiment, bolstered by a master plan from the architects Diller Scofidio & Renfro encompassing all four properties FIP owns, convinced the men that the Pavilion could still be the nexus of their investment.

“I felt like I already knew how important the Pavilion was to the Pines community, but that feeling got turbocharged after it burned down,” said Mr. Blesso, whose group also owns the Blue Whale (a favorite for the afternoon parties known as low tea) and the Hotel Ciel.

“I’m the so-called straight guy in the partnership, but we’ve talked a lot about how special a place the Pines is. We’re pretty sure it’s the gayest place in the universe, where people can feel the cares of the world drop away, just be themselves, and the Pavilion symbolized all of that.”