ORLANDO, Fla. — Survivors and the families of the victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre had meanwhile hoped a permanent memorial would be erected for the eighth anniversary of the attack on Wednesday. lone gunman who killed 49 people at the gay-friendly club in Orlando, Florida.
Instead, new, scaled-back plans are only now getting off the ground after a failed attempt to build a multimillion-dollar memorial and museum by a private foundation that dissolved last year.
The city of Orlando bought the nightclub property last year for $2 million, and has since outlined more modest plans for a memorial. The original idea for a museum has been jettisoned, and last week city leaders formed an advisory board to help determine what the monument will look like.
“We very much hope that we will find some family members who want to be part of this committee, as well as survivors,” said Larry Schooler, a facilitator charged with leading the memorial effort. City officials said the goal is to have the monument completed by 2028 at the site near downtown Orlando.
Until last year, efforts to build a memorial had progressed in fits and starts since the massacre.
On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen opened fire during a Latin American night celebration, killing 49 and wounding 53. At the time, it was the worst mass shooting in modern American history. But it was surpassed the following year 58 people were killed and more than 850 were injured among a crowd of 22,000 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas. Mateen, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, was killed after a three-hour standoff with police.
Barbara and Rosario Poma and businessman Michael Panaggio previously owned the property, and Barbara Poma was the executive director of the onePulse Foundation – the nonprofit that led the effort to build a memorial and museum. Barbara Poma stepped down as executive director in 2022 and left the organization entirely last year amid conflict-of-interest criticism over her stated desire to sell rather than donate the Pulse property.
The original project unveiled by the onePulse Foundation in 2019 originally called for a $45 million museum and permanent monument. However, that estimated price tag eventually rose to $100 million.
The scope of the project eventually expanded well beyond the nonprofit’s fundraising capabilitiesThis is evident from research by the Orlando Sentinel.
Deborah Bowie, who took the helm of the foundation in 2022, told the Sentinel that what she found when she arrived was a “house of cards waiting to collapse.”
“There’s a big difference between what the board thought was going on and what I saw when I got here,” Bowie said. “I couldn’t justify the budgets I saw financially.”
Meanwhile, Pulse survivors and others have been waiting eight years for a permanent memorial.
“We all deserve closure, and that will never happen until this monument is built,” Brett Rigas told the Sentinel.