GAY CITY NEWS: AIDS Commemorative Park Plan Alive

Community Board leaves open option at West Village site
BY NATHAN RILEY

The campaign to create an AIDS memorial park in a triangle site adjacent to the former St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village received a conditional green light from the local community board as it forwarded its recommendation for the parcel of land to the City Planning Commission.

At a packed meeting on November 17, Community Board 2 voted to keep alive consideration of a bold plan for the open space bounded by 12th Street, Seventh Avenue South, and Greenwich Avenue. The community board’s resolution to City Planning made clear it preferred the goals embodied in a design it has been working on for three months but left open the door for collaborating with the Queer History Alliance (QHA) to incorporate elements of its proposal.The resolution sent to City Planning largely endorsed a design presented by Rudin Management, the real estate concern moving forward on redevelopment of the St. Vincent’s campus, but agreed to give “careful consideration” to the QHA plan for a commemorative park. Rudin’s right to develop the former St. Vincent’s property –– primarily with high-end residential units –– is conditioned on creating park space in the triangle at issue, which formerly housed a utility building for the hospital.

At the meeting, passionate advocates for a commemorative site argued that the location is uniquely appropriate for honoring the battle against the epidemic given its proximity to the hospital that had the city’s first and largest AIDS ward. In the early 1980s, St. Vincent’s quickly became ground zero in the health crisis that cut a horrific swath through New York’s gay community. In the past 30 years, more than 100,000 New Yorkers have died of AIDS.