By Chris Fuchs
The center was supposed to be the nexus of a New York AIDS vaccine network with Dr. Luc Montagnier, a French doctor who achieved international prominence after helping identift two strains of the HIV virus in the mid-1980s, as its director.
Plans to build the center, to be named the Bernard and Gloria Salick Center of Molecular Biology, were first announced in January 1998 by former Queens College President Allen Sessoms. Dr. Bernard Salick, an alumnus of the class of 1960, pledged $4.5 million for the research center, a facility that would focus not only on finding a cure for the virus that causes AIDS but also on other diseases that affect the human immune system.
In all, the center was to cost $30 million, city university officials said. New York state agreed to pitch in $15 million if the college would do the same. But the college did not meet a state-imposed Nov. 30, 1999 deadline to come up with the $15 million and the contract, in essence, was abrogated.
Ron Cannava, a spokesman for Queens College, said that to date the college has raised $20 million for the center. CUNY is working out details with the state, Cannava said, to amend the terms of the original contract, a move that would allow the center to be housed on campus in Remsen Hall.
Sessoms' tenure as president of the college was marked by controversy. Following a series of controversial incidents involving him and the college, Sessoms resigned earlier this year and moved to Boston. Apart from failing to raise sufficient funds for the Salick center, Sessoms was accused of making disparaging remarks about remedial students during a September 1999 meeting with the city's Association of the Bar Committee on CUNY remediation.
Beyond the campus confines, Sessoms infuriated Flushing and Kew Gardens Hills residents by trumpeting the building of student residence halls. Fearing the devaluation of their neighborhood, the residents railed against the proposed dormitories, and as a result were never built.
Dr. Russell K. Hotzler, the former dean of academic affairs for CUNY, was appointed president of the college this year. In an interview earlier this month with the Times-Ledger, Hotzler said that there no longer were any plans to house the center in a “free-standing structure.”
Salick had given $3 million to endow a faculty chair for Montagnier in hopes Queens College would be at the forefront of AIDS research.
Salick, who lives in California with his wife, was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
