Pulse Nightclub Sign Removed Ahead of Demolition in Orlando

Nearly ten years after the Pulse nightclub shooting claimed 49 lives, Orlando took a concrete step toward honoring those victims this week when crews removed the iconic sign from South Orange Avenue, clearing the way for demolition of the building and the eventual construction of a permanent memorial.

Orlando Torres, a survivor of the June 12, 2016, attack, had hoped to witness the sign’s removal firsthand. He arrived Wednesday morning only to find the sign already gone.

“I’m one of the Pulse survivors that was nearly three and a half hours in the restroom, waiting to get saved by the SWAT team,” Torres told WESH 2. “It was important to see something that is showing progress.”

Torres recently returned to Orlando. He said the sign’s removal, while bittersweet, signals the end of a decade of painful waiting.

“We felt like we were sentenced for 10 years of agony, disappointments and delays,” he said.

Much of that frustration traces back to the collapse of the onePULSE Foundation, the nonprofit originally tasked with building a lasting memorial. The organization failed to complete the project, leaving survivors and victims’ families in limbo for years. The City of Orlando stepped in, purchasing the nightclub property for $2 million in October 2023 and restarting the memorial planning process from scratch.

Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, who built close relationships with many of the 49 victims’ families in the aftermath of the shooting, did not hide her frustration with how the nonprofit handled its responsibilities.

“I keep telling people if, unfortunately, it’s not against the law to run a not-for-profit into the ground,” Sheehan said. “I think there should be more rules and regulations, absolutely.”

Sheehan also reflected on the way Orlando united after the attack. Churches opened their doors to LGBTQ community members. Businesses organized fundraising efforts. She remembered how those early days carried a sense of shared grief and solidarity that pushed people together across divides.

But she also acknowledged that the families who lost loved ones deserved far better than years of institutional failure.

“They’re expecting to go to graduations, weddings,” Sheehan said. “They weren’t expecting to go to funerals, and their lives were cut short.”

The city plans to demolish the nightclub building as soon as next week. Before the sign came down, crews carefully removed artifacts from inside the structure, including the bar top, posters, and two chandeliers. A section of the original dance floor will be incorporated into the new memorial design.

New renderings released last week show a permanent memorial featuring a reflection pool, a survivors’ common, and 49 rainbow-colored tribute columns, one for each life lost. The inclusion of the dance floor in the design carries particular weight for Torres.

“It was a place to look forward to enjoyment and dancing,” he said. “That’s all they did, was to come out and dance, not to hurt anybody and get shot.”

Commissioner Sheehan said the demolition will carry its own emotional weight.

“I do think that the more emotional day for me is actually going to be when the building comes down,” she said, “because that’s a place where I went and had good times.”

For South Florida’s large LGBTQ community, many of whom feel a deep personal connection to Pulse, the progress in Orlando resonates far beyond city limits. The Pulse attack targeted a gay club on Latin Night, and a significant portion of the victims were Puerto Rican and Latino. The wound has never been only Orlando’s to carry.

Construction on the permanent memorial is set to begin once the site is fully cleared. After a decade of false starts and broken promises, survivors like Torres say the physical progress carries real emotional meaning, even when, like Wednesday morning, the moment you hoped to witness has already passed before you arrive.