The new park is set to be completed in early spring next year to commemorate the lives of those lost in the epidemic and become a new green space in the community and for the city.
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Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
If you were gay in Chicago of the 1970s, you could huddle in a bar behind papered-over windows and hope the police didn’t get wind of your clandestine activities.
But if you wanted to be free or at least as free as gay people could be at that time you might take a stroll over to an area known as “Belmont Rocks,” on the lakefront just south of the harbor.
“It was kind of a neglected area. No one wanted to be by the [nearby] rifle club,” recalled Ald. Tom Tunney [44th], who is openly gay.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Vice Mayor Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) were present at the groundbreaking of the AIDS Garden Chicago on the lakefront at Belmont Ave.“AIDS Garden Chicago will be the city s first public monument to memorialize the early days of Chicago s HIV epidemic, and honor those who continue