The design for the 1 October Memorial is now set.

The Clark County Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve the design that the 1 October Memorial Committee recommended.

Here to explain how that committee decided on a design to honor the victims of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history is Tennille Pereira, Chairwoman of the 1 October Memorial Committee.

Tennille, welcome back to Nevada Week.

-Thank you.

-What an undertaking this was, leading a committee whose members included a survivor, a sister of one of the victims who passed away immediately after the shooting.

What was that experience like for you?

(Tennile Pereira) It was pretty incredible.

It was overwhelming at times.

It was inspirational at times.

It was daunting at times.

-What makes you emotional about it?

-Knowing.

Knowing what so many people have gone through and knowing what the community went through.

But also all of the light and the joy that came out of this horrific night.

You know, trying to create a memorial that would capture all of that.

So many conflicting emotions and things into, you know, one design.

But also knowing that not everyone is going to be happy with it.

Right?

I want everyone to like this.

I want everyone to be happy with the end result.

So it really made it so our focus was on the process, giving people a voice.

So at the end of the day, even if it wasn't the memorial they would have wanted, they knew that we heard them.

-Well, you do bring it up: Not everyone is happy with it, because it honors 58 victims who died immediately upon the shooting.

There were victims in the years following who died from their injuries as a result of their injuries from that shooting, so bringing the total to 60 victims.

And so some thought they should honor 60 victims.

What do you say to that?

-So it's not quite as clear cut as the numbers.

We've lost a number of other individuals as well.

Some have died by suicide.

Some have died by health ramifications that were only brought on by the trauma that they suffered.

So it's really hard to delineate.

Now-- -Can you explain that further, the "brought on by the trauma"?

-Yeah.

We had, I know of several people that died from heart attacks as a result of repeated panic attacks.

And that was because of the trauma.

So it's hard to say here's where the line is.

Now, I know that there are official reports where the coroner, you know, coroner says, okay, they died from gunshot wounds.

Right?

The beautiful thing about this memorial is the full design has not been developed.

There are many features in it that are going to require further community engagement.

So there are still places for the additional individuals that passed to be honored.

And we heard from the community, and the community said that the number 58 is symbolic.

And they wanted that number captured.

It is the number that died in the immediate aftermath, meaning those families never got to see those loved ones again.

So the experience was different.

And so we, we also wanted to honor that.

But I want it to be very clear that the individuals that died, you know, later on--it was two and a half, three years after--they will be honored.

-Thank you for clarifying that.

What will this memorial look like?

We do have some renderings, but describe it for me.

-It's so special.

It's almost like a journey as you travel through it.

So if you look just down on top of it, it's like an infinity symbol.

But it also is kind of like the Route 91 ribbon that's very important to the impacted community.

They've used rammed earth as you enter into it, meaning they're taking the earth from the site and ramming it and having the walls kind of elevate.

We knew it was important to hide the sightlines.

So it really kind of goes in a ribbon where you go down, and you go through these experiences that will evoke different emotions that kind of can take you through that night and then to the 58 candles at the end with an angel wall that show all of the different ways that people were connected in the community and then back down into this beautiful glass panel, like tunnel, that goes up into the sky that depicts the clouds on the one year mark that looked like an angel.

I don't know if you guys remember that.

-No.

-Yeah.

So it-- there's so much symbolism in the design.

And then it travels back into this open pavilion.

And it has all of these grids that cross, showing the ways that we are all connected.

So it's beautiful.

-What do you mean by "hiding the sightline"?

-So we did a lot of surveys with the community, and they said that it was really important not to have the sightlines from the Strip, because of-- -Not to be able to see the Strip?

-Essentially, yes.

And they were worried about the sightline specifically to MGM, just because that's where the shooter had been.

Right?

They didn't want to see that, because they were worried about it evoking trauma responses.

We wanted this to be a safe space for those that were there.

And so having it kind of wind up and down, and it really-- your attention won't be on the sightline from that night.

-Where is this going to be, and how were you able to procure that site?

-So in the surveys, the community said it's really important that it's at the venue of site.

And MGM stepped right up and donated two acres immediately.

And it happens to be on the part of the property where people had fled and gotten out to safety and gotten help.

That's where they staged, you know, the emergency medical teams there.

And so it's a very sacred piece of property.

-That's another symbolic aspect of this.

What comes next?

How does this get constructed?

-So we kind of passed the ball back to Clark County, and they are in the works of looking at getting a nonprofit to take over from here to start raising funds.

One of the things that we recommended was that it be kind of a hybrid mix between public and private funding.

The reason for that is we want people to continue to have some ownership in this memorial and to feel that they are a part of it and continue to be a part of that process.

So there'll be a large fundraising effort to pay for it.

-The committee you were on, how many members?

-Seven members.

-Seven members.

You got input from the community through various sessions, and then it was-- was it four years of you seven hashing it out?

What did that look like?

-Yeah, it was four years.

And a large part of that was community engagement, but then also trying to figure out what process do we use?

We didn't want this to fall into any other public arts process.

We wanted this to be special because we needed the community engagement.

No other memorial has ever had this level of community engagement and input.

We felt that was really important because we had people from all over the world.

-Tennille Pereira, thank you so much for all of your work and for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you.