KCMO Parks Board Approves Skywalk Memorial

Kansas City, MO – Plans for a new memorial honoring the victims of the skywalk collapse at the Hyatt Regency were approved by Kansas City Missouri's Parks and Recreation Board yesterday. The Skywalk Memorial will be a 36-foot landscaped plaza on Hospital Hill, next to Children's Mercy. KCUR's Sylvia Maria Gross has more.

The skywalk collapse at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in 1981 is still know as the deadliest structural disaster in US History - 114 people died and 200 were injured. But it wasn't until a few years ago that the idea of a memorial was seriously pursued. The plan approved by the parks board is for a 36-foot landscaped plaza with illuminated points of light symbolizing the lives of the people affected by the disaster. Brent Wright is part of the Skywalk Memorial Foundation - he lost his mother and step-father in the collapse.

WRIGHT: Really, the idea is to make it a peaceful, tranquil place that hopefully people who want to reflect on those events and those who were lost there could go and do that.

Wright says the memorial will be funded by private donations. He hopes it can be built in time for the disaster's 30-year anniversary in 2011.

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