Colorado Springs – A proposal to erect a $5 million memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has been scuttled because of financial concerns and uncertainty over where it would be located.
Michael Crouse, chief of staff for the International Association of Fire Fighters, told city officials Monday that the union, a major partner in the project, had to turn its fundraising energy elsewhere.
“If this project had been approved in January, things might have been different,” Crouse said after the meeting. “But now we have a responsibility to raise money for members hit with two hurricanes.”
The IAFF has pledged to give $500 each to 2,000 firefighters in the Gulf Coast region.
The union’s initial understanding was that Salt Lake City sculptor Stan Watts would oversee fundraising, Crouse said. Watts, however, had not raised any money, awaiting confirmation of the location.
The IAFF was willing to take over fundraising this summer, but then two hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast.
To date, no land had been secured for the memorial. City officials and the IAFF have discussed a knoll near the Memorial Park aquatic center, but the city had not volunteered to donate the land – until Monday.
“The city said if we come back with a proposal sometime in the future, they’d be willing to give us the land,” Crouse said.
Crouse said the union also was concerned about the legalities of acquiring the statue’s license from Watts, who got it from a charity called the Bravest Fund.
The Sept. 11 monument, titled “To Lift a Nation,” would depict three firefighters raising the flag in the debris of the World Trade Center in New York. Watts envisioned a 60-foot-tall bronze sculpture, including a 12-foot-tall pedestal, and the names of Sept. 11 victims carved on the concrete base.
Watts has a license to make sculptures of the famous photo image as long as he donates 25 percent of his proceeds to the Bravest Fund, Crouse said.
With the IAFF as a collaborator, Watts pitched the monument unsuccessfully to New York and Washington.
Colorado Springs was a third possibility because the IAFF already maintains its national Fallen Firefighters Memorial there.
“It’s disappointing,” said Mayor Lionel Rivera. “It would have been nice to have a national monument like that in Colorado Springs. As for the future, we’ll see what happens.”
