ORLANDO, Fla. – Nearly 10 years after the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub, the City of Orlando says it’s moving closer to building a permanent memorial - and the items inside the club are now being preserved in off-site warehouse.
News 6 toured the undisclosed warehouse location on Tuesday, where crate after crate holds items from inside the nightclub, including a chandelier, the bar top, a door and the Pulse sign.
In December 2025, contractors carefully removed the remaining artifacts from Pulse as part of preparations to tear down the building.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer says some of those pieces could eventually be displayed inside the permanent Pulse memorial’s planned visitor center, though space will be limited.
“Some of the items will be in the visitor’s center, but the visitor center is pretty small, so it’s not like it’s going to be a museum display or anything,” Dyer said. “But there will be the ability to tell the story in the visitor’s center, so there might be some items that are in there.”
In May, Orlando officials announced the design phase for the visitor center and the broader Pulse memorial is now 60% complete.
The warehouse storage follows a carefully planned packing process that began in December, when contractors loaded artifacts into custom-built crates and moved them off the site. City Facilities Division Manager Navid Erfan previously said the items were packed with “archival grade materials” to protect them.
The Pulse site had remained a powerful, largely unchanged place of mourning since June 12, 2016, when a gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 others at the LGBTQ+ nightclub. The temporary memorial outside continued to draw visitors, many of whom describe being overwhelmed by the photos, tributes and personal reminders left behind.
The building was demolished in March 2026 to make way for the permanent memorial.
Jerria Ford-Jamieson said visiting the site remains emotional, especially knowing someone close to her nearly went to Pulse the night of the shooting.
“I just got so emotional,” Ford-Jamieson said. “Tears were rolling down.”
The city expects construction on the permanent memorial to begin this fall, with completion anticipated by the end of 2027.