St. Vincent’s AIDS Memorial in Limbo

For years, St. Vincent’s Hospital found itself at ground zero of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, treating thousands of afflicted patients. In the aftermath of the medical facility’s closing in April 2010, many in the West Village community now face a fight to memorialize those who lost their lives to the disease — a battle that features the expressed interests of community organizers, private management firms, and city government politicians.

This month, the New York City Council will be voting on a proposed memorial park, adjacent to the St. Vincent’s campus, to honor the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have died of AIDS. A design competition for the proposed park was held in January, with the envisioned greenspace set to fill the triangular intersection of West 12th Street and Seventh and Greenwich Avenues. But the plan has failed to receive backing from Rudin Management, which owns the park space, as well as the majority of the former St. Vincent’s site. For now, the fate of the 16,667-square-foot triangle park remains undecided.

The drive to build a memorial park began in late 2010, when two urban planners, Paul Kelterborn and Christopher Tepper, founded the AIDS Memorial Park Coalition.

“St. Vincent’s Hospital is widely considered the ground zero of the AIDS epidemic,” Kelterborn wrote in an email to the Free Press. “Younger generations frequently don’t have any knowledge of this history. It’s dangerous and alarming for us to not know about this public health crisis and the community’s response.”

The Sisters of Charity, a congregation of women in the Catholic Church, initially opened St. Vincent’s Hospital in the midst of the 1849 cholera epidemic. But what began in a small brick house with thirty beds soon became Greenwich Village’s health care lifeline. Over a period of 160 years, the hospital treated victims of the Titanic sinking in 1912, the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and the 2009 Hudson River landing of US Airways Flight 1549.

During the HIV outbreak of the early 1980s, St. Vincent’s became one of the first American hospitals to treat those with the disease. By 1988, the hospital had opened the St. Vincent’s HIV Center, becoming one of the most renowned treatment programs in the country. The center closed with the rest of the hospital in 2010. A majority of the HIV center’s patients and faculty have since found a new home with Mount Sinai’s Comprehensive Health Program, located 13 blocks north of St. Vincent’s.

In 2011, the Rudin Management Company finalized the purchase of a primary stake in the former St. Vincent’s property. Following the purchase, the real estate development firm announced plans to divide the land into an urgent care center, a park and luxury condominium buildings. Shortly after the announcement, a grassroots effort began to turn the site into an AIDS memorial.

Over 500 entries were submitted for the memorial park design competition. A jury chaired by architect Michael Arad, who designed the World Trade Center Memorial in 2004, chose a winner in late January.

“It was important to us that the selected design honors all who are affected by AIDS, and creates a public space that can serve as both a neighborhood park and a memorial of national significance,” Arad said in a statement.

Brooklyn-based architecture firm Studio a+i won with its design, “Infinite Forest.” The layout features large mirror walls on each side of the park and a collection of birch trees in the middle of the Triangle.

“It is important to create a space that conveys our sense of solemn respect, remembrance and loss without resorting to symbolism around a date, image or names,” the firm wrote in its application in the competition.

But only hours after the jury picked the competition’s winner, Rudin Management turned down the idea, citing a lack of community involvement.

“An open neighborhood park with a community-approved design is in our best interest,” Stefan Friedman, a spokesperson for the Rudin family, told the Free Press.

Some neighborhood residents agree with the Rudin plan for a more community-oriented park, worrying that an AIDS memorial would attract an overwhelming amount of tourists and dilute its intended message.

“It is imperative that the history of the village be preserved in culture,” said Gary Tomei, president of the West 13th Street Block Association 100 and co-founder of the Protect the Village Historic District. “The community needs and wants a neighborhood park.”

Other West Village residents are less focused on developing the memorial park and more determined to bring back a full-scale hospital to the area. Yetta Kurland, a local activist and attorney with the Coalition for a New Village Hospital, does not believe the community should have to choose between two public spaces in short supply: parks and hospitals.

“We need both,” Kurland said. “Even if some of the condos became a hospital instead,” Kurland said, “the Rudins would still be very, very rich. It is a win-win situation for them.”

In January, the Department of City Planning approved Rudin’s initial plans for the site. Including a memorial park and a full-scale hospital in these plans would force the company to go back to the Commission for re-evaluation, which could delay development.

“There is no family in the city that has worked harder to get a full-service hospital,” Bill Rudin, CEO of Rudin Management, told a City Planning Commission hearing last November. Yet Rudin argued that “the changing world and economy” have made such an endeavor impossible.

The North Shore-LIJ Health System, which will operate the planned urgent care health center at St. Vincent’s former O’Toole Building , does not envision a hospital on the site either.

“We came in with what we felt to be a very realistic and doable proposal,” Terry Lynman, a spokesperson for the company told the Free Press of the proposed health care center. “We will go a long way to meet the needs of the community.”

The community, however, has yet to agree on its needs.

“I am puzzled as to why the [AIDS memorial] design competition was held in the first place,” said Marilyn Dorato, president of the Greenwich Village Block Association. “What the community needs is a park. A small commemoration inside the park could work, but what we really need is public space.”

Kelterborn still remains optimistic about the AIDS memorial. He told the Free Press that the coalition is willing to compromise with Rudin, residents and community organizations in order to move a unified proposal forward.

Opinions vary among community residents regarding what should be done with the St. Vincent’s campus and triangle park. Hector Nore lives in the West Village and walks past the former hospital campus on his daily trip to work in SoHo. “Whatever [the plan] turns out to be, it should serve the neighborhood before anything else,” he said. “Even a memorial needs to be practical.”

But store managers like Kate Park, who works at West Village Florist, feel that the hospital’s closing has damaged nearby businesses and that only a new inpatient hospital would improve the economic and social prospects of the area.

“We tried signing petitions and raising support for keeping it in the area,” said Park. “Everybody needs a hospital, and now that there isn’t one, we have lost a lot of business.”

Annie, a nearby resident who often jogs near the former hospital campus, was pleased to learn about the proposed AIDS Memorial Park. She was unsure why some community members remain hesitant to support the project.

“What could be so complicated about putting up a single AIDS memorial?” she added.

Today, the former hospital remains vacant, a reminder of the ongoing quest for comprise being waged within community it used to serve.”

Will, a maintenance worker, served at St. Vincent’s for 20 years. When the hospital closed, he was forced to find another job. He now works nearby, and on lunch breaks frequently finds himself returning to the steps of the shuttered hospital.

“Sometimes I sit out here just to absorb the memories,” he said. “It’s kind of funny to have worked at a place so long, and now it’s gone. I’ll never get used to that.”

Additional reporting by: Harrison Golden, Henry Miller