Views > June 21, 2007

A GLBT Center of Their Own

A combination of public and private funds, Chicago’s new GLBT community center enjoys broad political support and is the first of its kind in the country

By Laura S. Washington

It’s “not your average GLBT Center” declared the April 24 edition of The Advocate, the national GLBT newsmagazine.

Indeed. The Center on Halsted, billed as the nation’s most comprehensive GLBT community center, was unveiled last month in a flurry of local and national press. More than a decade of perspicacious planning and frenetic fundraising culminated in a 175,000-square-foot complex on North Halsted Street, the main drag of Chicago’s Boys Town. The city’s first community center serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is also the first of its kind in the nation.

The three-story, gleaming expanse of steel, glass and art deco style celebrates a coming-of-age for GLBTs in Chicago and beyond. It is also the fruit of a blend of hard-headed politics and progressive causes. Unlike its peers around the nation, the non-profit community center will offer a dizzying array of programs and amenities: youth and mental health counseling, violence intervention, an HIV/AIDS hotline, culinary training, mentoring, legal assistance, a cyber center, a 175-seat theater and a basketball court.

Its star-studded list of supporters includes the singer Elton John, Billie Jean King of tennis fame, Art Smith (Oprah’s chef) and celebrity designer Nate Berkus.

Even more notable is its political clout. Forty percent of the center’s operational budget comes courtesy of the taxpayer. Can you say, “government funds”? As GLBTs gained traction in Chicago and nationwide for causes from equal rights to public accommodations, military service, civil unions and even marriage, the Center was building support among the politicians.

The concept had been simmering in GLBT circles for years. Then in 1999, activists snuggled up next to a strange bedfellow—Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan, who backed a $1.5-million state grant to built the Center. Once a staunchly conservative state lawmaker, Ryan was a fierce opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment. But in the ’90s he wholeheartedly embraced gay causes in his bid for the governor’s mansion. When Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley agreed in 2001 to donate $3 million in city-owned property, the GLBT Center went from dream to reality.

In 2005, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) engineered a $1.25 million federal grant. “That is remarkable, during the Bush administration” says Patrick M. Sheahan, an executive with the global finance firm UBS and chairman of the Center’s capital campaign. Emanuel, the powerful Democratic leader and former aide to President Bill Clinton, lives near Boys Town.

The Center’s coming of age paralleled the mainstreaming of the gay rights movement. Ten years ago, Chicago’s annual Gay Pride Parade was dominated by floats overflowing with sweaty, gyrating men in thongs. Today it draws dozens of straight elected officials eager to strut their stuff alongside the drag queens and Dykes on Bikes.

The Center has dovetailed with another progressive movement that has gone mainstream: environmentalism. The new building claims plenty of bona fide “green” traits. Designed by the global architecture firm Gensler, it fronts environmentally friendly features like a gray water system that collects and recycles water runoff from the roof, natural ventilation and electric resistance heating.

The all-green rooftop terrace was dedicated the Mayor’s own Rooftop Garden. Daley, now in his sixth term, is an avid environmentalist who constructed an energy-saving garden atop Chicago’s City Hall.

Without the largess of politicians, straight and gay, the Center would still be on the drawing board. It sits in the 44th ward, whose alderman, Tom Tunney, is openly gay.

The project also took some astute political spinning. The name “Center on Halsted” was more powerful for what it didn’t say than for what it did. The neutral moniker provided a fig leaf for the conservative politicians they pitched.

While the Center is on the city’s north side, where most “out” GLBTs live, its mission is to serve a wider constituency. That’s one reason why officials cut a deal with Whole Foods Market, the national grocery chain, to rent the center’s ground floor. The hefty rent will help support the non-profit’s operations for years to come.

It’s important to note that Whole Foods may not be quite down with the program just yet. Its website gushes that the new store was “inspired by the beautifully manicured streets of East Lakeview and by the diverse people who live, work and play within the community.” Still, the promo contains no mention of the word “boy,” not to mention “gay” or “GLBT”. Oh, well.

Still, the new Center on Halsted is a coup, and the political log-rolling that brought it to Boys Town offers lessons for progressives of all stripes.

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• Reader Comments

  “While the Center is on the city’s north side, where most “out” GLBTs live, its mission is to serve a wider constituency. “

  They why have a “special” GLBT center? A center that serves *everyone* would be, well, in everyone’s interest. 

  “Unlike its peers around the nation, the non-profit community center will offer a dizzying array of programs and amenities: youth and mental health counseling, violence intervention, an HIV/AIDS hotline, culinary training, mentoring, legal assistance, a cyber center, a 175-seat theater and a basketball court.”

  Yeah, straights definitely don’t need these services and entertainment. .  .

  At least it is only partially funded by taxpayers. Perhaps it can eventually be entirely funded by its users?

  Posted by wolf on Jun 21, 2007 at 12:53 PM

  If anyone hears of Oprah’s guests for her Obama fundraiser post the names on any one of the Imus websites, and keep posting them as they come up. Oprah has made a fortune pandering to the rappers, actors, writers, producers moguls, CEOs and comics who use “Ho”, the “N” word, pimp, pimp slap, violence, murder, bitches, etc. in their movies, albums, comedy tours, and any other media, including tagging. Going through a recent list of guests and “Oprah friends” from her shows we estimate that there may be as many as 233,000 references (so far) to these words her guests and “Oprah friends” have uttered publicly (In their global distribution of movies, videos, video games, albums, concerts, club appearances, and tours, MTV, TV, BET, Radio, magazine articles, books, poems, speeches, You Tube, My Space).  Imus made an innocent mistake based on the Americanization of these words by the late (murdered) Pac and B.I.G, two paragons of chivalry. Two dead patsies, used by the white man to make him richer and stronger, to give him the cash to buy another Gulf Stream. Oprah blamed Imus for this language, but she, more than Imus, fostered this through her pandering of the perpetrators of rap filth and through her silence. Oprah is beholden to Murdoch and his fellow media titan, John C. Malone, CATO Institute Board members and owners of these pipelines of death and degradation, along with that Jug eared old fool from Texas and his AT&T;death ray from space (Dish Network) that distribute this pain and hatred, this hopelessness to the poor ghettoized black kids trapped in the dangerous squalor of our inner cities this summer.  These white men distribute this depiction of Black America to the honky offspring of the “New Middle Class”.  These privileged white kids drink up this rap and its race hatred in their white suburbs with their manicured lawns and in their trendy gentrified whites only urban neighborhoods. The exploitative media Ofay include Geffin, Clive Davis, Jobs, Sumner Redstone, Mike Eisner, Jeff Immelt, and that silly bastard from Virgin records (whatever his name is) all the way down to Puff Daddy Cooms and Snoop Doggy Dog, a name only his mama can adore.  It includes Russell Simmons, the Elmer Fudd ring master of exploiting the horror of urban life and corporate sponsored female degradation. They all made billions off the suffering of kids from our American cities.  Once we get the stats compiled, fact checked and verified we are getting donations and taking full page ads in the New York Times, The WSJ and Variety asking Oprah and Obama to explain the presence of these people that have benefited from the murder, poverty and drug holocost perpetrated on our city kids. When they fly in to “Oprahstock” their numberless utterances of rap coda will be there, in print, to greet them. The ads will run on the day of “Oprahstock”. “Why did you invite this long list of perpetrators of rap language, Ms. Winfrey?” Is money that important? Oprah won’t sway the Obama vote. Blacks and women are voting for Clinton.  They know, and I know, its all about the BenjaOprahs.  Just post the names of potential attendees.  Please.

  Posted by mustaphahali on Jul 24, 2007 at 4:22 PM

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