OnePulse ordered to repay $394,000
Fla. Dept. of State letter calls for reimbursement for unbuilt museum
The onePulse Foundation must repay the state nearly $400,000 it received toward building a museum dedicated to the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, according to a letter from a Florida Department of State official.
onePulse was founded to build a permanent memorial to the 49 victims of the shooting and later added a museum to its plans.
The foundation announced in late November it would be shutting down and a month before that said it wouldn’t build the museum, for which several hundred thousand dollars were allocated from state coffers.
The letter, dated Tuesday, states that onePulse must “provide detailed written assurances of how the grantee plans to remain in compliance with the Grant Agreement and Restrictive Covenant.”
“If the grantee cannot … then the Division must end the Grant Agreement. … and the Grantee is subject to repayment of 100% of the grant funds paid, which at the time of this notice are $394,321,” the letter, signed by Deputy General Counsel Jon Norris reads.
The state had issued a $500,000 grant to the foundation, of which $394,321 had been paid out toward the “Pulse National Memorial and Museum.”
When onePulse decided against building the museum, it also offered to return land purchased with Orange County Tourist Development Tax, another restricted pool of funds.
Asked if onePulse or Orange County would be financially responsible for the payment, Scott Bowman, a spokesperson for onePulse, said the foundation had been in contact with the state to resolve the issue, amid a complex process to dissolve the foundation.
“Last week the foundation hired legal counsel who is reviewing the appropriate steps needed to carry out the board’s decision and comply with applicable Florida Statutes,” Bowman said. “The answers to your other questions will be part of that process and will be shared at the appropriate time.”
Lawmakers had expressed concern over state funding when the 7-year-old foundation started to unravel.
In a post on X Wednesday, formerly Twitter, State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, said she’d also asked the State Department about a separate $680,000 allocation, unmentioned in the letter.
She said she ultimately wants the state money repaid from onePulse and reallocated to Orlando, which now plans to build the memorial.
“What I don’t want to see happen is no state money to go toward a memorial,” she said.
Last week in a discussion, Orange County Commissioners learned it may inherit the debt if it takes back the 1.7-acre property on Kaley Street, previously slated for the now-abandoned museum plan.
Once the foundation abandoned its museum plan in October, it offered the land purchased with $3.5 million in TDT money back to the county.
In October, the former owners of the nightclub sold the land to the city of Orlando, which plans to lead efforts to build a permanent memorial on the nightclub site.
After its board chairman and executive director resigned their posts in recent weeks, the onePulse Foundation said last month it would work toward dissolving the nonprofit, originally started by Barbara Poma, who owned Pulse nightclub.