GAY CITY NEWS: Buoyantly, Urgently, AIDS Memorial Advocates Press for Funds

A nighttime rendering of Studio a+i's design for the AIDS Memorial Park in the West Village. | NEW YORK CITY AIDS MEMORIAL

In an atmosphere of both celebration and anxiety, a capital campaign for the New York City AIDS Memorial was formally launched at a March 27 press conference, with a new rendering of the triangular park — reflecting the design’s latest tweaks — unveiled as the project’s board of directors made an appeal for funds.

With roughly $2 million in hand, the board is halfway toward its goal of paying for the project planned for a parcel of land on the former St. Vincent’s Hospital campus in the West Village.

Under the terms of an agreement with Rudin Management and Community Board 2 brokered by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the site preparation is the responsibility of Rudin, which is redeveloping much of the rest of the St. Vincent’s property. The cost of building that portion of a larger new park that will be dedicated to the AIDS Memorial, however, falls on the project’s sponsors. The commemoration of the epidemic’s early days and the role the West Village community and the now shuttered hospital played in responding will encompass 1,600 square feet out a parcel of 16,000 square feet being redeveloped as parkland in a triangle bounded by Seventh and Greenwich Avenues and 12th Street.