Reflecting on an AIDS memorial. (AIDS Memorial Coalition)

Happy hour had just ended at the Stonewall Inn on Monday night (2-for-1 well, beer and wine). Rob (dirty martini) and Steve (Budweiser) were sitting at a table discussing the merits of Tom Brady and Eli Manning.

“Brady is better in the pocket, he’s better by the numbers, but Eli just always pulls it out for you,” Scott said. “No pun intended,” he quickly added.

“I think Brady’s better. He’s just past his prime,” allowed Rob.

So they were in agreement, a rarity, they said.

Among the things they disagreed on—Thai food (Rob prefers pad thai, Scott pad see ew), books (Rob thrillers, Scott histories)—was a recent proposal for an AIDS memorial on a triangle of land across from the shuttered St. Vincent’s Hospital.

“I think it’s a lovely idea,” Scott said. “It had a huge impact on the gay community, on the neighborhood, on the entire city, and it has never been properly commemorated. This would be the perfect place to remember those who were lost.”

“It’s a big community,” Rob said. “Bigger than just us. We need a space that feels welcoming to everyone. Besides, I don’t like the design. All those mirrors, it looks like something Frank Gehry would do.”

This fight has more color than a rainbow flag.

The AIDS Memorial Park was conceived by Christopher Tepper and Paul Kelterborn, friends with a flair for city planning—Mr. Tepper works at the city’s Economic Development Corporation, Mr. Kelterborn at the Municipal Art Society. They are no strangers to the power of a nice public space. Their inspiration came from a 2010 article in New York magazine, about the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital and the unusual role it played in serving the AIDS community in New York.

“The building standing there being vacant had become a sort of de facto monument to the epidemic,“ Mr. Kelterborn told The Observer.

When Rudin Management, the august real estate family that had been working to turn the hospital into condos for years, revived its plan last spring, the young bucks saw an opportunity and launched the AIDS Memorial Park Coalition to create a proper memorial in New York, something a city long associated with the illness lacks.

But there are those in the Village who have been less than taken with the idea. (This is the Village after all, so everyone has an opinion on what goes on in their backyard.)

The Rudins are rooting for a regular park. (Rudin Management)

“We are a park-starved community,” said Marilyn Dorato, head of the Greenwich Village Block Association. “We need more space for people to just sit out and relax. There is a section of the approved plan that has an AIDS memorial. There is opposition to giving this whole space over to a use like this.”

According to Ms. Dorato—who says she has been called homophobic for her opposition—she lost a number of close friends to AIDS and a memorial would be too painful. “I don’t really need to be overwhelmed with memories all the time,” she said. “That period was really, really dreadful.”

There are those in the gay community who oppose the plan, as well. “I’d rather have a park,” said Scott Colton, head of the 305 West 13th Street Tenants Association. “I don’t think we need to memorialize AIDS.” Ms. Colton felt that many within the AIDS community have been cast aside by what might be called the AIDS Establishment run by gay men.

“What are we memorializing, a disease?” she said. “That was controllable!  What, bad behavior of people who went out and had sex knowing full well that was how it was transmitted with total disregard for the consequences?”

Even some of the old guard oppose the plan, feeling that the memorial is the work of arrivistes. “The AIDS garden was a plan by a group of 20-something men in the gay community,” said Tim Lunceford, an activist opposed to both the memorial and the Rudin plan.

The Rudins are against the memorial for practical reasons: there is concern that altering the plan could reopen the public review process, delaying construction of those condos. The plan is currently under review at the City Council, having won support from the City Planning Commission in January. (It was staunchly opposed in the fall by Community Board 2 while Borough President Scott Stringer conditionally approved of it.) The Council will vote by April.

The developer is sticking to his own park proposal, already approved by the planning commission, though he points out it will have AIDS memorial aspects. “We’ve always been very consistent in the design that we’ve put forth in working with the community, that we have placeholders for commemorative elements reflecting HIV and also the rich history of St. Vincent’s,” Mr. Rudin told The Observer after the commission voted for his plan on Jan. 23.

Among the powerful people backing the memorial is the same planning commission that approved Mr. Rudin’s plans. “Given the past efforts of the applicant on this proposal, I am confident they will continue to work with the community in the future, including those interested in creating the AIDS memorial,” influential chair Amanda Burden said.

Messrs. Tepper and Kelterborn have lined up some influential backers as well, including Whoopi Goldberg, Kenneth Cole and Robert Hammond of the Friends of the High Line, who are on the jury for the memorial design competition, launched in November. Michael Arad, designer of the 9/11 memorial, chaired the jury and has become a de facto spokesman for the project.

An official design was announced on Jan. 30. Called Infinite Forest, it was designed by Brooklyn firm studio a+i and features a stand of birch trees bounded by a triangle of mirrored walls. A nice place for reflection, but not necessarily somewhere to take the kids frolicking on a play date.

The ultimate decision on the fate of the memorial stands with Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who must decide between one of the city’s most powerful real estate barons and the pillar of her political base, the Village’s gay community, not to mention her constituents opposed to the memorial. The community has been demanding numerous concessions from the Rudins for affordable housing, a smaller condo tower and other issues, which could be costly to the developer, and it is possible he and the speaker could come to an agreement on an AIDS memorial that would be far less costly than any of those proposals. A mirrored olive branch.

Then again, city planning officials said that it would be almost impossible to approve the coalition’s design within the current land-use review, setting the development back as much as a year—one promise in the Rudin deal is that the condos cannot open before a new emergency care center or the park space is completed, which is tentatively scheduled for 2014.

This could just be a politically savvy move by two upstarts trying to get a big AIDS memorial built somewhere, anywhere. Get on board with one of the most contentious development fights of a generation and see where it takes you. You win, you win. You lose, you have built up a huge base of support. For her part, the speaker is already hard at work on the issue. A Quinn spokesperson reported diplomatically, “We look forward to working with all parties to ensure the appropriate location and design for an AIDS memorial.”

mchaban@observer.com

eknutsen@observer.com

Village green. (Architizer)

Is a tiny triangle in Greenwich Village the next 9/11 Memorial? That's what a pair of local activists are hoping, with their plan to turn a patch of land across from the old St. Vincent's hospital into the city's first AIDS memorial. They have even signed up Michael Arad, designer of the ground zero mecca, to lead a design competition for the project.

"The design process that happened after the events of 9/11... catalyzed this citywide discussion about an important historic event, and we think this design competition can do something similar," Paul Kelterborn said in a video posted by the competition sponsors, Architizer and Architectural Record.

The hope is to turn the old triangle at Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street into a new memorial. As part of Rudin Management's plans to convert the old hospital complex into a condo development, the august real estate family has promised to turn the 16,000-square-foot triangle plot, formerly home to storage and maintenance facilities for St. Vincent's, into a park. Even if it does not like the new condos, the community welcomes the new open space, though it has quibbled over the particular designs for the park.

From ambulence parking to AIDS park. (Architizer)

It remains to be seen whether the Rudins would support the memorial plan, though the developer has been willing to make some concessions to the community thus far, such as building a new school in a former St. Vincent's building.

The designers behind the competition hope to convince them, as they view this as a rare opportunity to create a memorial in what was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. Not only has the Village always been strongly associated with gay culture and the equal rights movement, but St. Vincent's set up the first and most extensive AIDS ward in the city.

"There really won't be an opportunity to design another important public space in Lower Manhattan, Christopher Tepper said. "This site is particularly important because there's an opportunity here that doesn't come around very often."

The competition calls for a design that does in fact resemble the plans for the 9/11 Memorial a good deal. A park would be located at street level, while the existing below-ground space at the plot would be turned into the AIDS memorial.

How exactly this would be achieved is up to the designers participating in the competition. In addition to Mr. Arad, the competition has drawn a number of other high profile jurors, including Richard Meier, Kurt Anderson, landscape architect Ken Smith and High Line collaborators Robert Hammond (co-creator) and Elizabeth Diller (architect).

Submissions are due by January 21, with a win expected in the spring. The big question, then, is if the organizers can mount the kind of political support both the High Line and the 9/11 Memorial achieved in that short span of time.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC