Construction November 1998, and will be complete in spring 2001. The Oklahoma City National Memorial had its opening ceremony April 19, 2000. The Symbolic Memorial includes two massive gates, a reflecting pool, and 168 empty glass and granite chairs. The design was selected from 624 entries, from 50 states and 23 countries. Just a few yards from the reflecting pool, crews have started turning the Journal Record Building into a museum and the Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.
People come every day to pay their respects and leave mementos on the fence surrounding the site.
Opened for special events and weddings in late summer 2000, Coles Garden is a beautiful formal garden just a few hundred feet from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Built on 14 acres of rolling hills, this floral and sculpture garden features features lots of water, walls of green, meticulous lawns, thousands of plants and flowers, amateur botanists exploring the flora, happy couples taking marriage vows. Massive boulders compose a 50-foot waterfall, and everwhere nny's garden. Coles Garden features parking for 200 cars and 37 buses, a hedge maze, three ponds, fountains, hedge clock, amphitheater, rose garden, two outdoor and two indoor wedding areas, gift shop, and lots of flowers. It also has a number of monumental bronze sculptures by American artists and antiquities from around the world, including a massive wrought iron fence from the French estate of a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.