Plan for 2 places of remembrance receives City Council support

Highland Park officials are moving forward with a recommendation to design and create permanent two places of remembrance in honor of those impacted by the 2022 shooting.

City councilmembers during their Monday, April 28 committee of the whole session confirmed their support for a suggestion from a consulting firm (first reported by The Record) to create a primary memorial in the rose garden adjacent to City Hall and a “subtle, secondary place of remembrance” at Port Clinton Plaza.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering announced during the session that the city will issue a national request for qualifications this Wednesday, April 30, to begin looking for individuals and firms that can undertake design services for the projects.

That process, according to Rotering, will continue through the summer with the City Council likely selecting a firm early in the fall. City officials are expecting to announce a shortlist of finalists in late June.

Rotering said the city “has been diligently working to research and plan for a permanent place of remembrance that will provide spaces for reflection, remembrance and solace, pay tribute to those whose lives were taken and honor Highland Park’s resilience, especially those who were injured” during the tragic July 4, 2022 shooting.

Getting to two

Representatives from Do Tank, a consulting firm the city hired to conduct community engagement to determine how residents, survivors and victims’ families felt about the potential locations, presented their recommendation to city officials for the two-site approach earlier this month, according to Record reporting.

To reach its conclusion, Do Tank gathered more than 900 survey responses and conducted both focus groups and interviews with key stakeholders and community members. One key takeaway from the firm’s engagement process was the differing preferences from different stakeholders.

Survey results showed that community members preferred the rose garden as their top choice; however, participants who were present at the tragedy, those who were injured that day and next of kin of the victims preferred Port Clinton Plaza as the location.

According to Rotering, the city opted to move forward with the prominent and primary place of remembrance at the rose garden and the subtle, secondary place of remembrance at Port Clinton Plaza based on “the wealth of data collected, the thorough analysis prepared by the consultant team and a thoughtful conversation among the council.”

The two-site approach allows the city to “balance the needs of those who felt that a place of remembrance should be in a quiet place with ample space for development and those who felt that it was important to have a recognition at the site of the shooting,” Rotering later added during a brief speech at the council’s regular meeting, which followed the committee of the whole session.

Next steps

Officials have not yet publicly shared an approximate cost estimate for the project but City Manager Ghida Neukirch expanded on the request for qualifications process to explain why it’s an important step prior to budgeting.

“The idea for the request for qualifications is that before we even start talking (budget) numbers, we want to make sure that we have the right applicant,” Neukirch said. “So we are looking at what is a person’s qualifications to be able to do this type of work and then from there, what we are looking for in the place of remembrance is going to drive the budget.”

The decision reached during the committee of the whole session Monday night was a consensus to move the project to the next step, corporation counsel Steven Elrod noted. Final decision-making on the project still rests with the city council and can only be taken by the board during a regular council meeting.

Highland Park began working on creating a permanent place of remembrance — a project Rotering described as a “significant undertaking” — in 2023 when the council appointed a working group devoted to planning the space to remember and reflect.

During the committee meeting, Rotering emphasized the “mission” of the spaces, saying “the bottom line is remembering and honoring those who were directly impacted and those who need a place to go to reflect.”

Now, as work moves forward, officials remain committed to holding the project’s guiding values dear.

“We look ahead to the next phase of this project with a strong sense of purpose and commitment to the values that are guiding this work: inclusion, transparency, respect and value of all opinions, and the outcome will last for decades into the future,” Rotering said.

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