KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Thirty-one years after the collapse of the Hyatt skywalk, there is still no permanent memorial to the victims of one of the worst tragedies in Kansas City history.
The July 17, 1981, disaster killed 114 people and injured hundreds of others when a pair of skywalks crashed to the floor of the then-Hyatt Regency Hotel near Crown Center during a dance party. The tragedy was later determined to be from structurally-unsound rods which suspended the skywalks from the ceiling.
The hotel, which is owned by Crown Center and was managed at the time by Hyatt, has since become a Sheraton hotel.
But fundraising for a permanent memorial for the victims of the tragedy has been slow, and now the Skywalk Memorial Foundation has announced that there will be no public observance marking the anniversary. The foundation says that will help them to conserve funds for the permanent memorial.
According to a report in the Kansas City Star, the plans for a memorial – set for Hospital Hill Park on a site overlooking the hotel – were unveiled last year. The memorial – a stainless-steel sculpture inscribed with the names of the victims and designed by artist Rita Blitt – would cost the foundation around $800,000. As of December, they were about $200,000 short of that goal, which would also create an endowment to pay for maintenence of the memorial.
It’s unclear how much more the foundation needs to raise for the memorial.
