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The San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center

San Francisco's new Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center will open its doors this spring on Market Street in the Castro after almost a decade in the making.

A $15.3 million project, the center is the first of its kind in San Francisco and a response by the gay community to a city health department study that explored the reasons behind the still high rates of HIV infection among gay men in San Francisco in the early 90s.

"We learned it was a sense of isolation," said Dana Van Gorder, a Community Center board member who has steered the project from its beginning in 1993. "In part because of gay culture, and in part because of the epidemic, and despite lots of organizations, there was no sense of community."

Bars or sex clubs became their alternative, he said.

When the idea for a center first began percolating a decade ago, some questioned the need for one since they felt the Castro had such a strong sense of community.

"The reality is if you talk to gay youth or older people and people of color and lesbians, there are a lot of people who don't view the Castro as a welcoming place," said Van Gorder. He hopes the center will change that.

"Whether young or old, people who have been here for a long time or people who are just coming out, we wanted to create a place where anyone in the queer community who experienced social isolation could find more meaningful connections"

The Center, which owns the building and the property on which it is built, is a mix of low-rent meeting rooms, assembly space, performance venues, exhibition areas and nonprofit offices.

"San Francisco has been blessed with a lot of different nonprofits that have all been significant organizations for gays and lesbians," said Oren Slozberg, interim executive director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel. "We wanted to take that force and have an individual access point to support and augment services already in place."

More than 23 nonprofits like the Black Coalition on AIDS, the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center and the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, will collaborate to provide services to youth, elderly, low-income, parents or people of color in the gay community. These include legal, health, social, educational and cultural services.

In one stop, a gay couple with children can attend a support group for gay parents, leave their children at the center ín daycare, and then walk up two floors to receive legal counseling for domestic partnerships, said Slozberg.

Some of the nonprofits with offices in the city will offer services at the community center as well. The AIDS Legal Referral Panel, which serves close to 2,000 individuals a year, is joining three other legal nonprofits at the Center as well.

The Center is also what Slozberg calls a "nonprofit incubator," offering space and amenities at far below market rates to nonprofits long seeking a home, and those just setting roots in the city.

Bill Hirsh, executive director, says that "San Francisco is not such a big town, and yet, not everyone knows everything that is going on. Now, someone will be keeping track of all the resources for our community and so many non-profit services will be accessed much more easily because they'll have a presence there. We'll learn - and other folks will learn about us."

The Center will give small, grassroots community-based organizations a space to be instead of running out of people's living rooms," said Brenda Laribee, development director of New Leaf Services, a mental health agency serving the gay community.

"The Center makes it work for small non-profits, enabling them to be visible and connected to the community," she said.

Funded by a $6-million grant from the city, as well as $1 million from the state and $450,000 in federal money, the Center also received support from major corporate donors such as American Express and Bank of America among others. And it raised the remainder of the funds from individual supporters, no easy feat these days, including over 800 San Franciscans who chipped in at least $1,000 each.

The 40,000-square-foot-center designed by Cee/Pfau Collaborative seamlessly melds a modern glass structure and a restored Victorian.

Said Slozberg, "Queer community buildings and gathering places, have always been dark. You go the Midwest to a gay bar and the windows are black. We wanted to invite the world in. The glass design does that, it invites the outside in, which I think is a whole new way of bringing light to our community and a whole new way of looking at ourselves."