ORLANDO, Fla. – The city of Orlando unveiled new renderings Thursday for the permanent Pulse memorial, offering a closer look inside the planned visitor center as the project moves further into development nearly 10 years after the tragedy.
City leaders and members of the design team presented the updates during a meeting at Orlando City Hall, announcing the memorial has now reached the 60% design phase.
The newly released renderings show several interior design elements planned for the memorial’s visitor center, including a disco ball reflecting light across nearby walls, artwork installations and photographs honoring the 49 victims killed in the June 12, 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub.
The renderings also include a timeline detailing how events unfolded the night of the attack.
“It is incredibly challenging. I think they’ve done a very admirable job,” senior project manager Dan Michael Trbovich said during the meeting.
Trbovich said the design team has worked to create a memorial space where visitors can reflect and honor the victims.
“To see this evolution of everybody having an idea of what we thought it was going to be,” Trbovich said. “The interesting thing is what came out of the discussion was something very remarkable — something we would have not anticipated.”
Previous renderings released in March highlighted the exterior design of the memorial, which includes columns, a water wall and a reflecting pond.
The design team also announced plans to repurpose concrete from the original Pulse site and incorporate it into the memorial.
Not everyone attending Thursday’s meeting supported the updated designs.
Pulse Memorial Advisory Board member Nancy Rosado expressed concerns about the interior concept, saying it felt “too much of a museum-esque quality.”
Rosado also raised concerns about representation of the Latino community, which was disproportionately impacted by the shooting.
“The Latino community was also disproportionately impacted and I feel like we are being minimized,” Rosado said. “I don’t see any emphasis of that or any focus of that interior design that we saw.”
The city has set the memorial’s budget at $12 million. Construction is expected to begin in September and finish about a year later.
The permanent memorial will be built at the former Pulse nightclub site in Orlando.