In 1997, Pawtucket’s 74-year-old Leroy Theatre on Broad Street was torn down to build a Walgreens. Every day during the demolition, residents gathered across the street. Some held “Save our Leroy” signs in protest, while others just sat and watched solemnly.

Now, a decade later and on the same street, the 92-year-old Pawtucket/Central Falls Train Station is slated to be torn down to make way for a parking lot for a new CVS/pharmacy. Pawtucket Mayor James E. Doyle doesn’t want to see history repeat itself.

“We lost a piece of our history with the Leroy, and if this happens here, we lose an absolutely vital part of Pawtucket’s history, and what we will have is a parking lot,” Doyle said.

But finding a use for the station building, known as the Depot, might be difficult, even if plans to put a commuter-rail station to the city are successful, according to a lawyer for SMPO Properties, the Memphis-based developer that owns the site.

“My client has worked hard to find clients to go into the building, but no retailers are willing to go in,” said Thomas Moses, a lawyer for SMPO.

“Inside, there is a significant handicap-accessibility problem, plus many people are uncomfortable being in a building above the railways,” he said. “And the city has just had plans done that identify that the actual [commuter-rail] stop would be further north on the line, and may not even use the building, because the tracks beneath it are on a curve and they want the platforms to be on a straight track.”

The building was a working train station until 1959, when it was closed.

But although it may not ever serve that exact purpose again, Doyle and others who are seeking to preserve the building believe that it should be saved to complement the new train stop.

“With any of the scenarios, the building could still be used as something which passengers may pass to get down to the tracks, and that would allow the developer to take advantage of transit-oriented development,” said Matt Kierstead, a member of the steering committee of the Pawtucket Alliance for Downtown Success (PADS), a group of local business owners and residents.

“It has been determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places,” Kierstead added, “and you just don’t go knocking those things down.”

To prevent the developer from demolishing the 14,000-square-foot building, the City of Pawtucket went as far as getting a temporary restraining order. The City Council also took a vote on whether to seize the property by eminent domain; that measure failed.

But in Central Falls, where part of the property is located, Mayor Charles D. Moreau disagrees with Doyle.

“These developers purchased the land, and they have a constitutional right to develop it, and I’m not going to step on their constitutional rights,” Moreau said. “This guy stepped forward, and I think we should leave him be. That building is functionally obsolete.”

For Moreau, the primary concern is to accommodate the CVS store, which would be entirely on the Central Falls side of the three-and-a-half-acre property.

“The place has been empty for 47 years, and now we have an opportunity on the Central Falls side of the property to develop a CVS with a 20-year lease,” he said. “That would provide 60 jobs for Central Falls and $1 million in taxes over a 10-year period. As much as I’d like to see [the Depot] developed historically and be preserved, I live in the real world.”

Central Falls already has issued a demolition permit for the west wing of the building, which is on its side of the city line, and the demolition began in early December. Pawtucket’s temporary restraining order stopped it, however, before much damage had been done.

The restraining order was lifted 10 days later, after both sides agreed to a moratorium that ends Jan. 15. Since then, officials from both cities have met with the developer and CVS to try to find a compromise.

The idea born of that meeting is to create the needed parking for CVS (estimated at 73 spaces) by narrowing Broad Street instead of tearing down the Depot.

Michael Cassidy, director of planning for Pawtucket, said that CVS agreed to take a second look at the plans to decide whether it could “expand the site by taking in some of Broad Street.”

According to Cassidy, Broad Street is currently 70 feet wide, with a 12-foot sidewalk. By narrowing the sidewalk and trimming space off the road’s parking lane– much of which isn’t available for parking spaces, anyway – CVS would gain an extra 17 feet across the front of the property for parking.

Asked for comment, Mike DeAngelis, a spokes-man for CVS, described the discussions as “positive” adding: “They are working toward developing an alternate site plan that would be acceptable to all parties” he said.

Moreau said that, if the compromise can work, without worsening traffic congestion on Broad Street, he will support it.

“I’m not a huge fan of narrowing Broad Street, but it’s an option that’s out there,” he said. “And if CVS is amenable to it and if it works for both cities, then I’m amenable to it. I want to do whatever it will take to bring CVS here. We need to have CVS.”