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The Vancouver Art Gallery will be playing a version of sudden-death overtime for the next four months as its high-powered board fights to persuade politicians and the public that it deserves the last empty city block downtown all to itself.

There is no Plan B, say the board members, if they aren't successful at persuading the city to let them build a much larger gallery on the Larwill Park site on Georgia.

"We don't have a backup," said gallery board chair Michael Audain in an interview with The Globe this week. There is no other site downtown available and all previous efforts at designing an expansion on the existing site have been rejected because of concerns about the building's heritage, said Mr. Audain, one of the province's pre-eminent developers.

As well, if the gallery doesn't get a site that allows for a spectacular building and if there is no decision in the next few months, they will lose donors.

Private contributors have already committed $40-million for a new gallery, Mr. Audain acknowledged for the first time publicly.

"But that is subject to getting a site. It's preliminary pledges based on performance. Some of that money won't wait around forever."

Board member David Aisentat, president of The Keg restaurants chain, added: "We think there's a lot riding on this. We're not trying to put a gun to anyone's head but we're hoping for a continuous and ongoing discussion over a relatively short period of time."

He also said the new building needs to be something special and to stand alone on the site.

"We're not embarking on a project like this to have something adequate. If we were looking to dream a small dream and not a big dream, we might be able to do that. But we're looking for a gold medal."

Those high-stakes expectations, combined with a fierce debate among influential groups in the city over whether the gallery should move and commit money to a grand building, are likely to generate an extraordinary level of negotiating and arm-twisting in the next few months.

People supporting the gallery move are already lobbying Vancouver city council, which will have to decide to give up a prime block of land it owns for a single use and no profit. The city had already committed $48-million of future development profits from that site for renovating the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and had identified it as a site for a tall office tower.

There is also a group, headed by architect Bing Thom, that is opposed to moving the gallery from its present site, saying the gallery could expand underground instead. Mr. Thom has said that moving the gallery would empty out the heart of the city.

Other players in the debate in the next few months will be other groups that would like to get onto the empty Larwill Park site themselves. The federal government has expressed interest in an office building there. It has also been identified as a potential site for an aboriginal museum, an Asian arts museum, and the 1,900-seat theatre that was supposed to be built in Coal Harbour before the land was pre-empted by the convention centre.

As well, Premier Gordon Campbell has taken a strong interest in the gallery's move. His government provided $5-million for the gallery to study site options and committed $50-million to a new building. He intervened in what are normally city decisions to announce a new site for the gallery two years ago on False Creek - something that he did to try to help the gallery find a site that didn't have competing interests, said Kathleen Bartels, the art gallery's director.

The gallery decided in late January, after studying the False Creek site carefully, that it would be too expensive to build on the water. It then returned to negotiating for the city's Larwill Park site, which has kicked off the current furious conversation.