A new era begins at the site of the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire

SOUTHGATE, Ky. (WXIX) – A ceremonial ribbon cutting will mark the beginning of a new era at the site of the devastating 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire.

On Thursday, the ribbon was cut to officially open Vicinity Apartments at Memorial Pointe.

“We will never forget what happened in 1977. But at the same time, this is a new area, and I think it has shed a new light on this community overall,” said Southgate Mayor Jim Hamberg.

The fire on May 28, 1977 became the worst mass accident in the history of the Tri-State region and claimed over 150 lives.

“All of a sudden, about five minutes before 9 p.m., we noticed that there was a fire in the Zebra Room,” recalls David Brock, who worked as a busboy at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in 1977. “We had no idea of ​​the extent of the fire.”

The flames spread quickly and the supper club burned to the ground. Among the 169 fatalities were four unborn children.

“You never forget it,” says David Olliges of Vision Realty Group. “Anyone who has ever been in this area and knows it knows where they were on May 28, 1977. You never forget it. They still talk about it.”

In May 2020, the City of Southgate granted a developer permission to develop the 78-acre site.

A month later, a group called “Beverly Hills Respect the Dead” protested to stop all construction.

“They were worried about where people had died,” Olliges explained.

The contractor made promises to the group and kept them.

They named the settlement Memorial Pointe and financed and erected a permanent stone memorial at the foot of the driveway.

While single-family homes now stand at the other end of the property, the new Vicinity Apartments were built next to the land where the Supper Club once stood.

The developer also promised the group not to build in this area.

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