LGBT Community Center now open for business

To Blue, the executive director of the new Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Metropolitan St.Louis, her facility is more than just a place for people to meet and network, it is also a home.

“This is where you can be you,” she said. So far, Blue said, she’s welcomed more people home than she was initially expecting.

“I’ve had some folks looking for help, and I was delighted to give what I could,” she said. “Community members have been coming in to see and congratulate and to see what their house looks like.”

That house, located in the Euclid Plaza Building in the Central West End, features a modest multimedia library and two multi-purpose meeting rooms.

Blue said the library, which contains materials donated by local residents, will begin as a reference source, although she said she is working on developing it into a lending library. The meeting rooms will eventually include televisions and VHS/DVD set-ups, she added.

“Our meeting rooms are geared to be multifaceted,” Blue said, adding that she envisions the meeting rooms will be used by community organizations that have traditionally met at a member’s house for lack of a better place to go and may be utilized by individuals who would like to host workshops.

Blue said she was inspired to start the center while attending the 2004 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual Creating Change Conference hosted in St. Louis.

“Scott Emanuel [of Growing American Youth] called a town hall meeting, and [we] discussed [that] we got a lot of momentum and energy from Creating Change,” she said. “Lots of people from all over the community came and participated. We talked about a number of things, and one of them was a community center.”

Blue added that she had no apprehensions about taking on the project.

“I knew it could be done, I knew it would be work,” she said. “Shän [her partner] and I thought about it, and so have a lot of other people who have been involved. ... Once we thought about it and made the commitment, it was on.”

She said she’s visited community centers all over the country and added that they can make a significant difference in a metropolitan area.

“[We] had meetings when we first began when students from Rolla came down just to show how much of an effect a community center can have on an entire area,” Blue said.

The local GLBT community has been supportive of the center on varying levels, Blue said: all of the furniture has been donated, and several groups have pledged in-kind monetary support.

Blue also said that the local community at large and several businesses have been encouraging toward her efforts, including Left Bank Books, Coffee Cartel and the Schlafly branch of the St. Louis Public Library.

She said her ultimate goals for the center include an eco-friendly facility with a cyber library possibly in addition to the fledgling multimedia library. “We’re bringing the community together to show that we’re not so divided by our likes, our race, our gender, our orientations, our religions, [and we’re] bringing everyone together to help ourselves and help each other,” she said.

Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of Left Bank Books, said she and her partner are friends with Blue and provided moral support to her while she organized the center.

She added that Left Bank also donated a bookshelf and books to the center following a failed attempt at a lending library of its own for local GLBT group Growing American Youth.

“They meet right up the street from here, and we felt it was important for kids to have access to reading material that may or may not be available in the [public] library, and they certainly aren’t in a position to buy it financially,” Kleindienst said. “But then we just weren’t able to keep it going because space in the store got tight, and it’s hard to renew the people cycling through there [and] make sure they know about it. So, we’re going to give some books to the center and I’m hoping these will be useful for [whomever].”

Kleindienst said she thinks it’s important to have a local center for GLBT people.

“The community needs something visual to go on,” she said. “Our spaces and our landmarks are usually bars, and they have a place for sure, but it’s also nice to have some other kind of place to get together and [have] another way to offer services and serve as a clearinghouse for things that are going on.”

The LGBT Community Center’s grand opening will be Friday, Aug. 29.

You can e-mail Chris Boning at C.Boning@gmail.com.

LGBT Community Center

• 625 N. Euclid Ave.
  Suite 420
  St. Louis, MO 63108
• 314-367-1166
• E-mail: info@findmycenter.com
• Web site: www.findmycenter.com