Newtown To Vote On $3.7 Million Sandy Hook Memorial

NEWTOWN, CT — After seven years of budget trimming, design noodling, site surveying and soul-searching, the "living memorial" honoring victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting will go before voters in April, the News-Times has reported.

The Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission was created in September of 2013 by the Newtown Board of Selectmen in order to gather information to make a recommendation for a permanent memorial to honor the 26 lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

The commission began accepting designs in September 2017, and received 188 submissions before narrowing the choices to four. The winning designer was SWA, a San Francisco-based firm.

Although the location's changed twice, and the budget downsized from $10 million to $3.7 million, the core of the memorial has weathered the financial and political process: a sycamore tree planted in a fountain, with the names of the victims prominently carved into the fountain's stone edge.

The first site considered, off a hilltop meadow at Newtown's Fairfield Hills hospital campus, was nixed by conservationists. A second site was rejected by the commission after determining it was too close to a skeet shooting range.

If approved by voters on the Apr. 27 ballot, construction for the memorial will begin on the third site selected by the planners, a 5-acre field off Riverside Road.