By Brian Lockhart
Much-lauded plans to establish an AIDS research center at Queens College in Flushing are being re-evaluated by the City University of New York due to a lack of at least $6 million in private funding for the $30 million project.
When news of the center first broke in 1998, it was perceived as a major coup for Queens College and for the fight against AIDS. The center was supposed to be a nexus of a New York AIDS vaccine network with Dr. Luc Montagnier, who achieved international prominence after helping identify two strains of the HIV virus in the mid-1980s, as its director.
CUNY, however, announced last Thursday that Queens College had failed to meet a Nov. 30 deadline for raising funds to match the $15 million the state had set aside for the research center.
The structure was supposed to be built on a plot of land adjacent to Queens College
