The Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, sit of one the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, is slated to become a memorial and museum.
The club, which catered to members of the local LGBTQ community, was the site where 49 people were killed and 60 more injured by gunman Omar Mateen in an apparent homophobic terrorist attack in June 2016.
Pulse owner Barbara Poma calls the planned memorial “a healing initiative.” While she doesn’t yet know what it will look like, or how much it will cost, she maintained that the memorial will be a “community-driven effort” showcasing “historic artifacts and stories from the event.”
Poma also set up the onePULSE Foundation non-profit to fund and oversee the memorial’s construction. “Historically if you look into the research of the other memorials that were done, they were not done by their governments,” she told WMFE. “They were done by foundations and task forces.” True to her convictions, she turned down a $2.3 million deal from the city of Orlando to buy the venue and build the memorial.
Poma hopes to open the memorial by 2020.
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