Virginia Beach will spend $8.5 million to build a memorial to victims of the 2019 mass shooting at a municipal building.
The finished project will include gardens and a fountain that follows a long, winding pathway.
“It will be a memorial that our entire community will be grateful for, proud of and something that will set us apart, will be worthy of the people who were impacted on that day,” Councilman Michael Berlucchi said after the City Council approved the plan this week.
The project’s gardens and paths will sit near the city’s municipal center at the intersection of Princess Anne Road and Nimmo Parkway.
It’s expected to break ground next spring and be completed in May 2025.
The city chose Dill Architects last spring to design the memorial. The company has completed about a third of the design work, which it showed off to the city’s 5/31 Memorial Commission in September.
The renderings show a meandering path through a wooded area split by an elevated reflecting fountain. At either end of the path are garden areas featuring trees, benches and more. The end point will overlook an adjacent pond. Different sections are dedicated to recognizing victims, survivors and first responders.
Twelve people were killed and four more injured when a city employee opened fire in a municipal building in 2019. A police officer was also shot while responding to the shooting.
The original estimated cost to build the project was $5.8 million, but the city council agreed to fund additional amenities beyond the memorial itself, including a parking lot and trails around the pond.
The city already agreed to pay Dill $1.2 million for the design, bringing the total budgeted cost to $9.7 million for the memorial.
The current plan would make the city’s memorial project more expensive than many other memorials for mass shootings, according to information shared by city staff.
In Newtown, Connecticut, a memorial with a reflecting pool and walkways recognizing the school shooting there in 2012 was completed just last year. It cost $3.7 million.
In San Bernardino, California, a huge sculpture commemorating the 2015 shooting that killed 14 was also finished last year. That one cost $2.3 million.
Both of those were publicly funded.
In Las Vegas, where 846 were injured when a gunman opened fire from above on a crowded concert in 2017, a privately funded memorial is expected to cost $25 million. That effort is currently in progress.
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