While there had been previous reservations, at the end of last week co-chair Ralph Enokian was contacted by Mayor Lou Rosamilia and informed that the Armenian Heritage Memorial would be placed on the previously consecrated ground north of the Vietnam Memorial. The memorial will be created and installed by Grethen-Cahringer Memorials of Lansingburgh.
The decision comes after years of tension between the city and the committee.
“There have been years of work to make this memorial a reality,” said county legislator Tutunjian, who represents the city of Troy on the legislature.
The memorial effort was conceived, and has been spear-headed by, the Knights and Daughters of Vartan, a fraternal Armenian service organization. They formed the Armenian Genocide Memorial Monument Committee in 2005, which has been working to place a memorial in the city’s vicinity, stating that Troy and its environs have been the locale of the largest Armenian community in the region.
Read also
The memorial will reflect the positive contributions their community has made to Troy and the capital region, and would serve to honor victims of the Armenian Genocide, as well as those of all genocides. That extermination, resulting in 1 to 1.5 million Armenian deaths, caused the growth of the present day Armenian diaspora community in America, including that now residing in and around Troy.
Shortly after the committee undertook the memorial project seven years ago, the Troy City Council passed a resolution authorizing the monument, but did not specify an intended site. Yet the committee has hoped the $15,000 monument would find a home in Riverfront Park, and were prepared to place the memorial on the northernmost end of the park several years ago. However, then-Mayor Tutunjian urged them to wait, so as to more fully incorporate the memorial as part of a $1.75 million state grant redevelopment project targeting the park. This delay caused tension between the group and the city, and the committee began contemplating other local parks.
“We looked at Frear Park, Beman Park” and others, said Rafi Topalian, a committee member. Those parks, due to a variety of reasons, were found unfitting by the committee.
In 2010, the committee’s hopes for the memorial by the river grew with the inclusion of the monument in the preliminary plans for Riverfront Park, compiled in September of that year. Further strengthening those hopes was the monument’s inclusion in the master plan and first phase, compiled in March of last year, which was then cemented when the mayor at the time, Harry Tutunjian—who is an Armenian-American himself—sent an August letter giving the city administration’s word that the memorial would find a place in the northern end of the park.
In the community’s eyes, the letter guaranteed the monument would be placed in Riverfront and thus would be located in the heart of downtown and seen by the thousands that pass through the park during the various concerts and major city events held there. With this understanding, last December the Genocide Memorial Committee organized a ground ceremony that consecrated the ground where the monument will be placed.
In July, however, the new city administration under Mayor Lou Rosamilia, who attended the consecration ceremony, met with Armenian community leaders and put forth the possibility of moving the monument to Frear Park near the Oakwood neighborhood. The Armenian community wasn’t been pleased.
“We didn’t take that too well,” Topalian said, explaining that the ground had already been consecrated, and that the committee considered the agreement with the previous administration “a contract” with the city.
Since early in the 20th century, there has been a substantial Armenian community in the Troy and the surrounding communities, a result of Armenians refugees fleeing organized killings during the Armenian Genocide. The Armenians that came to Troy in that diaspora founded the second Armenian Church in America, became very active in the community, and so inundated a length of road across the river in Watervliet that it became known as Little Armenia for a time.
City officials and committee members will meet tonight as scheduled.