The plan to house a permanent memorial to Jan. 8 victims and survivors at the Old Pima County Courthouse downtown was made official Monday morning.
Dozens of elected officials, Jan. 8 Memorial Foundation members and others gathered outside the courthouse to make the announcement in the effort to establish a permanent home for mementos of caring and kindness that swept across Tucson in the days after the 2011 shooting spree.
“This memorial will remind the world of what happened here,” U.S. Rep. Ron Barber said during a morning news conference. “But more importantly ... what happened afterwards: the kindness, the caring and love that came forward. And you will see that when you look at the archives, it represents Tucson at its very, very best.”
Barber, a Democrat, was one of 13 people wounded in the attack outside a grocery store on the northwest side. Six people were killed.
While other sites, such as the Safeway store where the shooting spree occurred and former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ office, were considered for a permanent memorial, the old courthouse was selected because it’s the epicenter of local government, said Stephen Brigham, president of Tucson’s Jan. 8 Memorial Foundation.
“Jan. 8, 2011, was about Congress on Your Corner, an act of local democracy horrifically interrupted. We not only wanted a magical space like this, but we wanted a space that could connect so many things downtown,” he said.
Now that an official site is selected, Brigham said the foundation can ramp up fundraising efforts and select a design team. So far, the nonprofit has raised more than $100,000 in private donations, Brigham said.
But private funds won’t pay for the memorial alone.
The group is expected to ask for as much as $10 million in funding from Pima County as part of a larger bond package that could go before voters in November 2015.
A first test of whether the county will include it in a future $650 million bond package will come as early as today when the Board of Supervisors votes on a resolution allowing the memorial to be housed at the courthouse.
Pima County Supervisor Richard Elías expects the board to approve it.
The city will vote on similar measure when it meets Wednesday.
Mayor Jonathan
Rothschild said he supports the memorial and its location.
He said the memorial would serve as a constant reminder of need to reduce the “plague” of gun violence afflicting the country and the need to help those suffering from mental illness.
The memorial itself will occupy space both inside the courthouse and outside at the east end of El Presidio Plaza.
Although the memorial lacks an actual design, it’s expected that some of the artifacts left at makeshift memorials that sprouted up in the days after the shootings will be incorporated into it, said Ross Zimmerman, Jan. 8 victim Gabe Zimmerman’s father and vice president of the Jan. 8 Memorial Foundation.
The remaining artifacts will likely be preserved at a public archive for future research purpose while others will be turned into pieces of art, Zimmerman said.
It’s expected to take two to three years to complete the project.
