LGBT Community Center Latest Move Means Back to Court Street

BY PAUL MASTERSON

The Milwaukee LGBT Community Center announced its upcoming move from its current Downtown location on North Market Street to a new site on West Court Street. That address was previously occupied by the Center for nearly a decade prior to its relocation to North Market Street a dozen years ago. According to the announcement, the decision was made in part based on a survey. “Feedback generated by the survey showed that the Center needed to be centrally located, reachable via public transportation, physically accessible and have a visible presence.”

The statement includes an enthusiastic quote from Amy Orta, the Center’s executive director, celebrating Court Street as the Center’s “original home”. The Center’s original home is actually a space in a warehouse storage building on South Second Street. I volunteered there myself. Opening with great fanfare, the historic lease signing was captured in a photo from fall of 1998. It shows founders and members of Center’s original board of directors. Among them is Stephanie Hume, a well-known activist and long term Center advocate. Asked what she thought of the latest move back to Court Street (the Center actually moved there in 2002). Hume does not share the enthusiasm of the Center’s official statement.

Reflecting on the question of the Center’s position in 2021, Hume evaluated the move in the context of the realities LGBTQ community faces. “It’s not a step forward. We should be working to move the organization forward. It represents a reality of LGBT centers across the country facing issues of relevance. The issues are varied, some financial, changing demographics, activist burn-out and the complexities of negotiating modern LGBTQ life,” Hume said. “The Center has to come up with a plan to both serve the community and participate in it. In its early years that discussion of purpose was put to the community with thousands of responses to a survey that asked the obvious question, what should the center look like? Some wanted a swimming pool. But the main push was to address the needs of diversity,” Hume continued. She noted that she was unaware of any recent, community wide assessment of the Center’s role.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION?

However positive the official fanfare for the upcoming move seems to be, similar concerns had already been raised by LGBT Center supporters. The announcement mentions community participation in the decision making, such as the passing mention made with no discussion about the move at the organization’s annual meeting in June 2020 and a follow-up “Town Hall Meeting” held on November 2. While those meetings are cited as supposedly garnering community support, having attended both, I can say the idea of returning to Court Street was not well received. During the hour-long Town Hall Zoom meeting (ostensibly held to hear community input for the move but with only a dozen in attendance of whom most were Center staff or board members), John Griffith, a long term Center volunteer and Senior Advisory Council member as well as Department of Aging commissioner, pointed out the negatives of Court Street’s isolated location and steeply graded street as an issue of accessibility for seniors. His concerns went unanswered. By the end of the Town Hall meeting, however, it was clear that the decision to move to Court Street was already a fait accompli. In a recent conversation I had with Griffith, he was sanguine about the move, remarking “when given lemons, you make lemonade.”

One hopes for the Center’s success, of course. However, the retreat to Court Street seems to accomplish precious little to fulfill those touted community expectations of central location, accessibility or visibility. Transparency throughout the decision making process would have helped answer the question, “Why?”

Paul Masterson is an LGBTQ activist and writer and has served on the boards of the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center, Milwaukee Pride, GAMMA and other organizations.