ORLANDO, Fla. – After a summer of pivotal events, the board of directors for the onePulse Foundation, whose mission was to build a memorial and museum honoring the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, voted late Tuesday to dissolve the organization.
The announcement was made public early Wednesday morning in a news release.
“In the aftermath of the Pulse tragedy, a group of volunteers came together in our grief as trustees to form the onePULSE Foundation,” wrote Yolanda Londoño, onePULSE Foundation board spokesperson. “Our vision was to honor the 49 lives taken, survivors and first responders, and to permanently preserve the site of the tragedy. We developed an ambitious agenda to fulfill these mandates and received positive support both locally and globally.”
But seven-and-a-half years after the tragedy, ground has not been broken on the project.
The foundation faced a year of challenges.
Watch: How long has it taken other communities to build memorials?
In April, the foundation’s founder, Pulse Nightclub owner Barbara Poma, stepped down from the organization.
And in May, onePulse announced the memorial would be built on a different site after one of the nightclub’s investors refused to donate his share of the property to the foundation.
In July, onePulse sent a letter to Poma announcing it would not be renewing its lease on the site after its Temporary Use Permit expired more than a year prior.
In October, Poma sold the land the nightclub sits on to the city of Orlando, and the foundation returned ownership of another parcel of land, intended to house the museum, back to Orange County.
Poma issued a statement to News 6 Wednesday afternoon, saying that the countless tragedies, a changing political climate and a global pandemic since 2016 caused communities to refocus their resources, and that affected the goals of the onePulse Foundation.
“What remains unchanged is that 49 lives were taken in an unpredictable act of terrorism that left a deep wake of pain and sorrow that can never be erased. We look forward to the day when a memorial becomes a reality on the sacred site where our beloved Pulse nightclub brought so much joy to so many,” Poma wrote.
Earlier this month, the organization’s executive director, Deborah Bowie, resigned.
“Unfortunately, best intentions are not enough,” Londoño wrote. “We have been challenged by unexpected and definitive events, among them the inability to secure a full donation of the Pulse nightclub site from the property owners and a global pandemic that brought with it critical limits and many unanticipated consequences, that ultimately impacted our fundraising efforts.
“These unanticipated challenges have led the trustees to vote late (Tuesday) to initiate the transfer of our assets and the dissolution of the foundation,” she wrote.
She said the organization was offering the city of Orlando and Orange County access to all existing planning and design materials.
Leaders refused to offer any additional information or interviews on Wednesday.
The group Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice, which has garnered the support of several survivors and victims’ families, claims the organization exploited them.
They issued a statement, which read in part: “While we are grateful that they are shutting their doors, we still demand a forensic audit, so that they are held accountable to their donors and to taxpayers for the millions wasted.”
