GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — It’s the second year in a row where the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks will pass without a 9/11 monument in Green Bay.
The previous memorial, in front of the Neville Museum, included a replica of the World Trade Center and a piece of a girder from the destroyed buildings…but there were a lot of problems with it.
Not only was it was poorly constructed, with the granite used in the monument cracking and the indoor marble that served as a base wearing down over the years, but it was also factually inaccurate: it listed the wrong flight numbers for the planes involved in the 2001 terror attacks that killed 2,996 people including the 19 hijackers.
The monument fell into disrepair and was removed in early 2019.
“It was a pretty shoddy deal,” Alderman Randy Scannell said of the former monument on Wednesday. “It was a very sought after monument, people visited it, but given its condition I thought it was more disrespectful to keep it up than to take it down.”
The monument was first installed by a Fox Valley group back in 2005, and Green Bay was chosen as the location after the City of Madison refused it.
It was supposed to be the first of many–the group had originally planned to place a similar monument in the capitols of all 50 states. That never happened, and the former monument was the only one of its kind ever built.
City leaders haven’t forgotten about the monument, however. A replacement is in the works.
“The girder is in the police headquarters, and once we get the new Public Safety Building, we will rebuild the monument,” Scannell told WTAQ.
There’s one problem: the new Public Safety Building project has been tabled amid the city’s financial issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“At the time, we were thinking we would be able to do that much sooner,” said Scannell. “But with the current conditions, we are going to have to hold off a little bit.”
The city of Green Bay is expecting a $1.6 million revenue shortfall this year.
Scannell says that once the Public Safety Building is complete, however, a replacement monument would be constructed either in the lobby of the new facility, or just outside of it.
“I think the police and fire departments like the idea of having it at their building, and it seems appropriate,” Scannell added.
Of those who died on 9/11, 412 were first responders.
When the new monument is ultimately build, Scannell says, they will likely seek public input, and commission local artists, during construction.
