HARRISBURG, Pa. — As the LGBT Center of Central PA opens the door to its first-ever brick-and-mortar space, it marks the beginning of a new chapter filled with promise, permanence and a sense of home.
“We did not really have a central location. So, ironically, we were a center without a center,” said LGBT Center of Central PA board member Bradley Gebhart.
It was once a nomadic organization, providing services and hosting programs wherever they could rent or borrow space.
“People were like, ‘Okay, are we meeting here? Are we meeting there?’” said Gebhart.
But now, they have an official location along Front Street in Harrisburg.
“We're no longer homeless. We are now rooted in the community, literally and figuratively,” said Gebhart.
While it may be in the early stage of decoration and development, the center has plenty of amenities ready for any drop-in visitors.
A kitchen is available, as well as a washer and dryer, both free to use. Plus, the center has a library of books and movies to combat the restricted access of LBGT stories.
“From a historical standpoint, it's great to have books old and new, so that education happens. Understanding happens. Information is passed along,” said Gebhart.
And with space to spread out in their community room, the organization plans to expand its youth and adult services, trans and non-binary groups, and their Aging with Pride program for elders.
“Fifty years from now, we will be able to look back and say, 'wow, look at how much we've grown,'” said Gebhart. “But it all started, not from the very beginning, but it all started when we had that first building."
And the Center isn’t just about new spaces. It’s also welcoming new leadership. After searching for a new executive director since September, Amber Roadcap will be stepping into the role this July.
The LGBT Center of Central PA is always looking for volunteers, so if you’re interested in helping out or joining one of the Center’s many program, you can find more information on their website.
FOX43's full interview with Gebhart is attached and transcribed below:
Q: Why did the LGBT Center decide to expand?
A: “The LGBT Center of Central PA has been in existence for a long time, but we've never had our own place, our own brick and mortar center. We've either rented, borrowed or been displaced. We're sitting here today in our brand-new home of our own LGBT Center on 1323 North Front Street. Now, we can establish programs and services and be a community center, not just for Harrisburg, but for specifically the LGBT community here in our region.”
Q: How did you operate before having a physical location and what about that made providing your services so difficult?
A: “Prior to having this unique location, the LGBT Center of Central PA was a nomadic organization. We were renting from a couple of different places. During COVID we were more remote. We borrowed some other locations from GLO, one of our programs. For the most part, the LGBT Center was a nomadic, service-oriented, program-oriented organization, but we did not really have a central location. So, ironically, we were a center without a center. That's why it's so exciting to have such a brand-new location, because that way we can actually build from here and have a foundation. We're no longer homeless, we are now rooted in the community, literally and figuratively.”
Q: And how were you able to acquire this building?
A: “We had a very robust capital campaign. And together that committee reached out to our community and sought donations. We had large donors, small donors, but we engaged everybody in this capital campaign. And because of the generosity of our community, we're able to raise enough to buy the building and pay for some renovations. So, we want to thank the donors as well for all their contributions, because without them, this building would not be possible.”
Q: How will having this space help the LGBT center carry out its mission?
A: “One of the main things to carry out our mission is folks will know where we are. When we have to have various locations on the website people were like, ‘OK, are we meeting here? Are we meeting there? Where are we getting together? Where is this service?’ So, for one, we will have an address. People will get to know us; people will be able to see the center literally as they drive by on Front Street. Folks will know this is the address. This will become a hub of activity, hub of programs and services. The more people know about us, the more they'll want to use this center either for an event, for a meeting, or just to stop on by. We want this to be a place that's safe, that’s brave, that folks can come and just, ‘Hey, after school I want to come by and do some homework here,’ or ‘Hey, I heard there's some guitar lessons happening,’ or Aging with Pride for our elderly community members, ‘We can meet here. We can have our book club here. We can have our art class here.’ We have an art gallery. We want artists to showcase their artwork. Here we have a history project that's being led by Barry Loveland and that's going to be on display on a regular basis. By having a physical location, it’s almost like your home. If you have a home, you can decorate the home. You can invite folks over. You can have your dinner parties. Fifty years from now, we will be able to look back and say, ‘Wow, look at how much we've grown,’ but it all started not from the very beginning, but it all started when we had that first building.”
Q: Why is a space like this necessary for Harrisburg and the Central PA area?
A: “It establishes us as, not just a city with a center, but a city with a center that can then grow. Grow the services. Grow the programs. It's very important. In addition, community centers like ours are an economic boom for the city. Folks from out of town will come here for events or for meetings, for get-togethers or to speak with our people, to talk about our programming and they will use the restaurants and hotels in the area. We always apply it for grants and have creative ideas that we want to implement. With that, those partnerships and those grants and those connections, this will be a hub of additional activity. Grants and funding are coming in. People come from out of town, and not just to use restaurants and hotels, but they will bring other resources with them. Just like any location, once folks know that it's here and it starts to grow, the city grows with it.
Q: What is the significance of providing a library of books and movies that tell LGBT+ stories?
A “From a historical standpoint, it's great to have books old and new, so that education happens, understanding happens, information is passed along. Like any good library, folks can check out a book that they've never heard of. Libraries are important because they house the history of LGBT communities or just populations in general. So, the significance of our library is that many times, libraries in general, especially 50 years ago, did not have literature that was based on the LGBT community. It was sometimes rare and random when someone would find a book that had that subject matter. So, by having an LGBT center and a library or book area with videos that is LGBT community centric, we are able to be that one-stop-shop for all things LGBTQ, so that folks know if they're looking for a book or have heard of a book and don't know where to go to find it, that this could be that library. We are gathering books from donations, from personal collections, anywhere we can find them to house them here so that our community, young and old, can get information, whether it's nonfiction, fiction, romance, history about their community. Again, books or educational books or enlightening. Books will help tell a story, and if it's your story, then you don't feel so isolated or alone. You know that your story is someone else's story, and there's a communal effect in having that. And we already have a book club forming, so folks will be able to come here, have a particular book that they can check out from our library or from another library, discuss the book and kind of go from there. Having the library in general is a great idea, but also it inspires discussion and information and understanding.”
Q: Can you tell me the significance of why it's important that people have free use of your kitchen?
A: “This is a drop-in Community Center. It's a place where folks can come, let's say, after school, do their homework as we mentioned earlier. They need a snack? We have a kitchen where they can prepare something. For staff, it's great for staff who are here 40 hours a week to have a kitchen to be able to prepare something. If we have events here, although it's not an industrial kitchen where caterers can actually bake from here, at least our caterers will have an opportunity to have a location to work from. So having the kitchen, like any house, is a key factor in creating a home. So, a kitchen was very important for us, not only for the staff but for the community, but just to have as a Community Center. And I know we want to talk also about our washer and dryer. So, first, a little background. When we first came up with the concept of having a physical location, the previous director, Amanda Arbor, did a survey of all of our community members, new and old, and that survey gave us a list of some of the things that we wanted from a Community Center. Kitchen was one of them, community room was another, meeting space, the quiet room. One of the things that came up was a washer and dryer. So, the idea is that folks could come here if they had a few items that needed to be cleaned, or if we had some outreach materials that needed to be washed in between events, then we had that right here and save us the time and energy. This building fulfills the majority of what that survey told us and part of what the survey told us was we wanted a washer and dryer. So, if anybody wants to stop over and have some laundry and then feel free, no cost. You don't need a card or coins.”
Q: Can you tell me about the reasons for having a quiet room?
A: Sometimes the days get stressful. Sometimes we as people just need a place to kind of wind down, to meditate, read a book, be on our phones without a lot of extra distractions in the world. Especially for the LGBT community, there's a lot of stressors out there. There's a lot of societal impact and it's not always positive. Many times it's negative. So, it's a place to get away. Our center is a safe place, but in addition to that, it's a room where you can just ‘be’ without any distractions, without any interference, for, as long as you need. Right now, it's the glass room, but eventually we'll have smoked glass so that there is some privacy, not blacked out or anything, but definitely just some privacy. “
Q: Between the kitchen, the washer, dryer and the quiet room, it looks like the LGBT Center is committed to accessibility. LGBT people are prone to homelessness or living in lower income situations, and so these amenities seem really necessary.
A: “Unfortunately, a lot of our homeless youth have been kicked out from their homes due to their LGBTQ status. So, in addition to working on a housing program, which are part of our programs and services for LGBT youth, we're now looking into possibly working with the elderly too, who might be homeless or having housing issues. This is a space to provide a location that feels like home. Our tagline is a place of our own, a home of our own, and that's exactly what it is. So, it's a very valid point that you're making this community center not just available to everyone in the community, but also, home for folks to go to whenever they need it.”
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about the history wall?
A: “The LGBT history project, which is run by Barry Loveland and housed at Dickinson College, is a project of the LGBT Center of Central PA. We go hand in hand, and we've been working on that project for years now. The objective of the project is to collect information about the LGBT history in Central PA from early 60s and 70s, what was going on there, to present day because history is always evolving. History is in the making all the time. So, whether it was Common Road, which was an organization for youth that was started again 40-50 years ago, which is on display now, or LGBT media and how that has evolved over the years from before, social media and the Internet to now and what that looks like. The history project basically chronicles the LGBT history here in Central PA, whatever that may look like. It could be T-shirts from rally or a magazine that lasted for about a year or so, and the importance of this building is it's part of the history project, not just because we're housing information about the history project, but because for the first time in history, we do have a home of our own. History is a part of the center. We are the history and history will be forthcoming. So at least once a quarter we will have a display that's something new and different and informational about the LGBT history project ongoing.”
Q: That case changes every month?
A: “We have a glass case and in that glass case, we'll have physical objects from the movement on the wall. We'll have posters or setups or print materials. Every quarter it will change. Right now, it's just our general Common Roads, which was the first youth-oriented programming that wasn't available back in the day. Our next project will be LGBT media: what did that look like and how did people get the word out there and connect before the Internet and social media? At least once a quarter during 3rd in the Burg, there will be a new display, new information and a new opening. Every quarter will have like a little informal opening and presentation about what's happening in LGBT community history.”
Q: Tell me a little bit about being able to feature artists every month.
A: “The goal of the Community Center is not only to be a place for people to come and to have programming and services in a hub for the community, but also to display art specifically from LGBTQ artists. At least once a semester, maybe once a month, we recruit artists to stop over, show us your work, and we will display artists along one of our walls. If we have more than one artist, we have a conference room that can be an art gallery. We want to turn this into a space for art as well. Eventually, once we're more settled, we might have art receptions so that the folks can come by and meet the artists, talk about the artists here, their inspiration, what motivated them. For all your artists out there, please connect with us because we're very interested in having your work here. The only thing we need is for it to be hangable. No taping pictures on the wall. So, get in touch with us and then we will work with each artist to come up with a time and place for their artwork.”
Q: Can you tell me about any programs that you provide here, especially anything that has changed because you now have this space.
A: “Just yesterday we had for the first time our Aging with Pride members, more of the elderly parts of the community, who in the past have met over the phone or zoom or at Fort Hunter, but now, for the first time, we had a group here on site. They were of course excited because for the first time in their 50-year history of living here, they had a place where they could call their own. From that conversation they wanted presentations, they wanted the book club, maybe a yarn club, maybe art classes. Already the brainstorming and the enthusiasm for that particular segment of our population has blossomed. Just from that one meeting, we will have more activities and more programming. Now, the folks who are putting on Pride Fest are meeting here. We're hoping to partner with them to a greater extent now that we have a location so that some of the activities during Harrisburg Pride can happen here as well. We put on an annual fundraiser, the FAB event, which is in November this year. We're going to have some activities here before, during and after FAB. They're no longer concepts, but they become reality because we have a physical brick and mortar space.”
Q: How did the community respond to the opening of this space?
A: “The Harrisburg community has shown overwhelming support of this center. We want to thank the mayor's office, who's been very supportive. We want to thank our state legislators. We especially want to thank our county commissioners, who are always very supportive of this location. When we had our warm grand opening, we had tremendous support from our capital campaign donors and those who've been in our community for a long time. When we had our official grand opening, we had support from all levels of government who were here on site to give us a proclamation and to show their support.”
Q: How do you hope people will feel knowing that these options are here?
A: “We hope that anybody who Is a part of our community already will take advantage of the space, see it as their own, and come to us with ideas on how they can participate using this space. To anybody that's new to the area or hasn't heard about us before, we want them to come over and say hi and see how they can get involved. And then as word of mouth starts to spread, we hope that folks who may have a connection or not will be able to come by and learn more about who we are. One of our visions is that in six months to a year from now, this place will be so busy because it'll be used as often as we're open. So, we hope to see this place active, active, active as much as possible.”
Q: The center is actively looking for a director, correct?
A: “Well, the good news is we have found an executive director. Her name is Amber Roadcap, and she will be starting with us on July 1. We're looking forward to that because Carter—Amanda Carter—has been a wonderful, couldn't have asked for anything better, wish she would have stayed, interim executive director, but once our executive director's here July 1, then even more growth and potential is possible. She will bring new ideas, new history, new connections, and through all that we'll be able to have a foundation, a person who will be here to be able to help us grow into the future. It's an exciting opportunity for us as a board to have a person, but not only that, but have a person who is going to start off brand new with a brand-new center with unlimited potential.”
Q: Does the center have volunteer opportunities available?
A: “The LGBT Center of Central PA is always looking for volunteers. Once we grow, we'll have a better idea of what kind of volunteer opportunities exist. One of our goals is to have a mural on the side of our building, so we might need some volunteers under the guidance of an artist to paint a mural. We have volunteers who already do our landscaping, so with new opportunities, new programs, new services, volunteerism is always a need. So, if you're interested in volunteering, please, whatever your skill set is, or just your interests, get in touch with us here, and we can put your name on the list and go from there.”