ORLANDO: Pulse Nightclub Owner Declines To Sell After City Makes Offer To Create Permanent Memorial

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Barbara Poma, the owner of Pulse, said Monday that she does not plan to sell the nightclub to the city of Orlando. Mayor Buddy Dyer’s staff recently revealed that the city had negotiated a $2.25 million purchase price for the club, where 49 people were killed and dozens more were injured in a mass shooting June 12. The city hoped to eventually build a permanent memorial on the land.

In a press conference outside the club Monday afternoon, Poma said she struggled with the decision. “This decision truly came just from my heart and my passion for Pulse, and everything it’s meant to me and my family for the last 12 years since its inception,” she said, clutching her husband Rosario Poma’s hand. “So I think the struggle was you know, letting it go, and it’s just something I could not come to grips with.”

Poma said she did not yet know what the site will look like in the future, or if she will keep the existing club building in place. Poma has been raising funds under a non-profit called the onePULSE Foundation. Though most of the funds raised in 2016 have been promised to the National Compassion Fund, 10 percent will be set aside for a “permanent memorial at the existing site of Pulse Nightclub.”