Here are the six options for the Parkland shooting victims’ memorial. You can help choose
When Jessica Lieberman first heard that the Parkland 17 Memorial Foundation had launched a nationwide design competition, she immediately decided to submit her idea: a heart with angel wings.
She did it because she has been living in Parkland since 2015 and experienced the tragedy closely on Feb. 14, 2018. She also did it because she relates to the grieving families of the victims on a personal level, she said, as she lost a 17-month-old son in 2017.
“I thought, ‘I’m always going to wish I would’ve submitted it if I don’t,’ so I did,” she told the Herald on Tuesday. “And now I’m humbled and honored that they selected it as one of the finalists.”
FROM 2023: Memorial planned to honor 17 lives taken in Parkland shooting
Wednesday marked six years since a former student shot and killed 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus in Parkland. Lieberman is one of six finalists that the the Parkland 17 Memorial Foundation — a nonprofit created by some volunteers in 2021 to unify efforts to build a public space that will honor the 14 students and three school staffers — chose last Thursday, moving a step closer to accomplishing its objective.
To commemorate the anniversary, the foundation’s seven-member board announced last week that it narrowed down the list of about 50 designs it received after a nationwide call to the six finalists. The list ranges from local firms like Lieberman’s to others farther away, like one in California and another in New York.
But before the foundation actually begins the construction, it still needs the public’s help with donations and decision-making.
The Parkland 17 memorial’s funding, location
Michael Moser, the foundation’s board chairman, said the memorial will be located in a plot of land that borders Coral Springs and Parkland, the two affected communities. That’s because the North Springs Improvement District, a water utility company in Coral Springs, was purchasing 150 acres for a nature preserve and offered the foundation space on the land for a memorial offered 150 acres that it had purchased, where the former Heron Bay Golf Club stood.
The foundation will fund the memorial via donations exclusively. Moser declined to say how much money the foundation has raised so far or how much the project will likely cost, but urged the public to support the cause online at parkland17.org/donate/.
In the next month, the foundation’s board members will interview the design finalists to discuss logistical details about each proposal, like how much money each would cost and request any edits if needed, Moser said.
READ MORE: What’s changed in South Florida schools since Parkland?
After those meetings, the board members will ask for the public’s opinion via an online survey on the foundation’s website, parkland17.org. And in the summer, they will vote for a winner.
“It was tough to select only six, because we had to pass on some beautiful design, but we’re very excited about the progress. We’re excited to get to the next step of the healing process,” said Moser, a Coral Springs firefighter who served as incident commander at the school scene that day.
The finalists and their designs
Here’s a list of the finalists and what their designs would look like:
Gordon Huether, Gordon Huether Studio
Huether, from Napa, California, proposed a circular design with a fountain with seating in the center, surrounded by 17 limestone obelisks – a tribute to each victim. The obelisks would display each victim’s name and have a small shelf for visitors to leave tokens of appreciation.
Around the obelisks, his design would include 17 royal palm trees and an outer seating wall. The plaza would be paved with limestone and an anonymous poem called “But for a Small Moment,” dedicated to the 17 families and cited in a 2019 Public Safety Commission report, would be engraved into the surface of the plaza in a circular layout, surrounding the obelisks.
Huether told the Herald on Tuesday that he hopes his design will become a reality, and that he envisions community members leaving mementos like teddy bears, flowers and candles on each shelf.
He said he applied because he likes working on large public art projects that “make a contribution to humanity and make a contribution to sensitive, very painful subject matter.”
Humanity Memorial Inc. with EDSA, Inc. and Dills Architects
Humanity Memorial, a Sutton, West Virginia company, worked with EDSA, based in Fort Lauderdale, and Dills, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to submit a design called “17 Rays of Lights,” that would feature 17 pillars with a bird engraved on top of each pillar.
The pillars form a circle over a fountain, “coming together” to represent the Parkland and Coral Springs communities coming together, according to the foundation’s website.
The Herald could not reach the artists for comment.
Jessica Lieberman, J Lieberman Designs, and Rebecca Bradley, Cadence Landscape Architects
Parkland-based Lieberman collaborated with Bradley’s Cadence Landscape Architects, based in Fort Lauderdale, to submit a proposal.
If seen from a bird’s eye perspective, Lieberman’s design shows a heart with two angel wings on each side. In the middle of the heart, the design includes a sculpture in the middle with 17 birds flying above it.
The sides of the heart have 17 light posts that Lieberman said the foundation could light up with different colors for different occasions like school’s colors for the shooting’s anniversary. The team also includes a local poet who would work with the families to write a poem that could be engraved in the memorial.
Lieberman said she was inspired by her late son. After he passed, she identified with the winged heart and now has it in multiple areas in her own home. The symbol seemed ideal for the memorial, she said, because “hate tried to win that day but love is what’s going to triumph.”
Stephen D. Oliver with Wannemacher Jensen Architects, Inc.
Oliver and Wannemacher Jensen Architects, both located in St. Petersburg, submitted a proposal designed “to celebrate love’s transcendence and help heal Parkland’s interruption of life and community,” according to the foundation’s website.
The design would involve 17 etched glass memorials, each with a poem about a life lost. The memorials would line the arc of a continuous reflecting pool and sit by a courtyard for reflection and events.
The Herald could not reach the artists for comment.
RiadArchitecture
Two brothers, Mahmoud Riad, based in Cairo, Egypt, and Khaled Riad, based in New York, proposed an enclosed space with a partially open ceiling in the middle that would feature a large elm tree, guiding visitors’ gaze towards the sky. A fountain would surround the tree, and the memorial’s roof would feature a public park resembling a garden.
Mahmoud told the Herald on Tuesday their firm picked the tree because it’s a symbol of the community regenerating and “the idea that, if you take care of them, trees can be eternal.” Both siblings said they’re open to switching the elm tree with an indigenous plant from Broward if the community would prefer that.
Both also described the finalist milestone as “bittersweet.”
“It feels sweet to be close to being awarded, but at the same time we would have much rather this shooting would have never happened,” Mahmoud said.
VLC One, Inc.
Hollywood-based VLC One’s design would feature 17 angled sculptures rising vertically and lifting a globe of the world in the middle. The memorial would sit over a circular pool, allowing for water to continuously flow upward toward the globe.
Each angled sculpture represents each victim “lifting the world to a higher dimension,” according to the website, and the ”never-ending flow of water evokes ideas of profound depth, changing feelings, love and sadness, but also purification, rejuvenation, and transformation.”
The Herald could not reach the artists for comment.
Another memorial on the MSD campus?
The South Florida community could also have access to another memorial for the 17 victims in Broward County.
Officials at Broward County Public Schools announced in September that they will destroy the building where the shooting took place — the 1200 building on the Stoneman Douglas — this summer. However, they haven’t yet determined what will happen in the space afterward, because “the District’s priority is to finalize plans for the demolition,” said Keyla Concepcion, a district spokeswoman.
“As of now, no decision has been made about the future use of this site,” she said on Tuesday.
Some of the victims’ family members, however, have said they want to see a memorial there.
Tony Montalto, the father of victim Gina Montalto, told the Herald in July that he wants the district officials to know what will be built before the demolition in case they need to keep access to water and electricity.
“We need a memorial,” he said at the time. “Just because the building goes doesn’t mean that that ground is not sacred and important because of who was lost there, who was taken.”
