At Last, Gay, Lesbian Center Gets Elbow Room : Services: Group is moving into spacious headquarters, allowing it to put its operations under one roof.
Edward S. Gould grinned every time he opened the door to another meeting room in the new home of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center. At last, space!
After 17 years of operating out of a Highland Avenue building so cramped that clients’ body sizes were sometimes taken into account in scheduling appointments, the center is moving into its new, 45,000-square-foot Hollywood headquarters this weekend.
Purchased and renovated for $7 million, the four-story building on North Hudson Avenue will allow the largest gay and lesbian services agency in the nation to house all of its programs under one roof.
“This building symbolizes a sense of permanence this community has not had before,” said Gould, a retired banker who led the center’s fund-raising efforts for the project and donated $500,000 with his partner, Fred Nelson.
The building was purchased with more than $4 million in contributions, money from center reserves and the sale of the Highland building, along with a $1.3-million loan from the city Community Redevelopment Agency. When interest and fund-raising costs are added, the building’s price tag will approach $8 million.
Gould attributed the success of the fund-raising drive--which exceeded expectations--to “recognition of what the center does for the gay and lesbian community, recognition that we need to have a future beyond AIDS.”
With a staff of 163, the center’s services--ranging from a youth shelter to legal counseling--have been spread over three buildings in Hollywood and West Hollywood. All will open Monday on Hudson Avenue except for various health and HIV clinics, which will move into the new quarters next spring when third-floor renovations are complete.
On Thursday, moving vans were parked in front of the huge, fluttering rainbow banners that mark the center’s entrance, just south of Hollywood Boulevard.
Not only will the space give the staff elbow room, it will also accommodate a greater array of community activities. The Gay Men’s Chorus will be able to store a piano for rehearsals, and an outreach position was created to expand community-oriented programs.
There is a certain irony in the building itself, which until a few years ago was used by the Internal Revenue Service. Gould remembers that shortly after the center was established in 1971, the founders made pilgrimages to the IRS offices with requests for tax-exempt status. The IRS, Gould said, “didn’t know what to do” about a gay services agency and took a long time before it granted the center’s request.
“The fact that we’re going to have a 45,000-square-foot building in the middle of Los Angeles is an incredible statement . . . for our community,” said board member Karen Siteman. “We’ve sort of arrived with the big boys.”
