Pulse survivors and families can visit nightclub this summer, Orlando says

Ryan Gillespie, Orlando Sentinel on Apr 1, 2025

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Survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting and families of victims will be able to step inside the club ahead of its eventual demolition, a city spokesperson said Tuesday.

Such a visit was requested by some of the families since the city gained control over the building in Oct. 2023, and is now being planned for the week of June 9, the same week as the annual Pulse Remembrance Ceremony. The city posted a form on its website for those families and survivors interested in visiting the building to sign up for more information.

“The city is currently in the planning phase of the visit, however we can share that victims families and survivors will have the chance to visit inside the building,” said Ashley Papagni, a city spokesperson. “This will be a private visit for the families and survivors who feel it is important for their mental health and continued healing to visit the interior of the building.”

This is expected to be the only chance to enter the building before construction of the memorial — which will require demolition of most and perhaps all of the club — begins.

Questions of visiting and preserving the sites of mass killings are often fraught with emotion for those involved. Families and survivors toured the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland after the shooting there, but it was finally torn down last year.

The planned visit was first reported by WESH-2.

In February, Orlando OK’d the design for a permanent memorial to the Pulse shooting which killed 49 and wounded 53 on June 12, 2016. The final design includes a reflection pool where the club’s dance floor is now, but still unanswered is whether any portion of the nightclub building would be used in the eventual structure.

The building’s fate was heavily debated over the course of several meetings of the Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee, which included families and survivors. Members generally agreed that it made little sense to retain the structure, and discussed whether to save one of the nightclub walls or replace it with an obelisk. But they made no decision on that issue.

Mayor Buddy Dyer has said he intends to have the memorial built before he leaves office at the end of 2027, and expects the memorial to cost about $12 million.

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