ADVOCACY
Brooklyn Community Pride Announces New HQ
New Crown Heights hub for LGBTQ Brooklynites to open in late 2020 or early 2021
BY MATT TRACY
Current and former elected
offi cials, developers,
and community leaders
gathered at the Brooklyn
Community Pride Center’s space
in Bedford-Stuyvesant on February
11 to sign a 30-year lease on
the organization’s new headquarters
in Crown Heights, set to open
late this year or early in 2021.
The Brooklyn Community Pride
Center currently offers programming,
services, and HIV and other
health testing for the borough’s
LGBTQ community at 1360 Fulton
Street near Restoration Plaza
— and that space will remain in
place even after the new headquarters
opens its doors. The new
location, which will be housed in a
newly renovated space at Bedford-
Union Armory, is slated to boast a
public working area, new offi ces, a
pantry for events, a laundry room
for queer individuals experiencing
homelessness, and a dedicated LGBTQ
mental health clinic, which
will be operated by Callen-Lorde
Community Health Center. Fitness
programs for clients are also in the
works at the new facility.
The Brooklyn Community Pride
Center anticipates the new location
opening up between September
of this year and January of
next, but the lease signing marked
the beginning of a new era for an
organization that has anticipated
a new space for more than a decade.
Former Brooklyn Borough
President Marty Markowitz and
out lesbian former City Council
Speaker Christine Quinn signaled
their support for a new space back
in 2009, according to the center.
“Today is a celebration of a promise
delivered,” Brooklyn Community
Pride Center CEO Floyd Rumohr
said. “After years of searching, assessing,
fundraising, and negotiating,
today we signed a 30-year
lease on our new, state-of-the-art
headquarters at the Bedford-Union
Armory in Crown Heights.”
The new milestone gave Rumohr
an opportunity to refl ect on the
center’s journey and its transformational
Debbie Brennan, president of Brooklyn Community Pride Center’s board of directors, and BFC Partners
principal Don Capoccia signed a 30-year fl anked by Wendy Stark, Christine Quinn, Floyd Rumohr, and
Rachel Loeb.
growth over the years.
He recalled a time when the center’s
offi ces lacked enough electrical
outlets and did not even have
doors between rooms, representing
a stark contrast to the upcoming
space he describes as “state-of-theart.”
Quinn was among those on hand
and spoke about the importance of
outer borough services provided by
organizations such as the Brooklyn
Community Pride Center. In
emphasizing that point, Quinn
stressed that activism in outer boroughs
has been the driving force
behind LGBTQ rights advances in
New York City and beyond, which
she said shattered the myth that
her old City Council seat — the one
currently occupied by out gay City
Council Speaker Corey Johnson on
the west side of Manhattan — was
the one hub for queer issues. She
specifi cally cited marriage equality
and the passage of the Gender
Expression Nondiscrimination Act
(GENDA) as examples of initiatives
that were championed by individuals
in outer boroughs.
“That all only came to be, in my
opinion — and statistics show it —
when the communities organized
within the boroughs they lived in,”
MATT TRACY
she said, adding that people in outer
boroughs “bravely came out.”
That organizing, Quinn added,
also showed local elected offi cials
that LGBTQ issues were not only
of concern to white folks, but rather
to diverse communities across
the city.
Others on hand included BFC
Partners principal Don Capoccia,
which is developing the new
space; Debbie Brennan, president
of Brooklyn Community Pride
Center’s board of directors; Wendy
Stark, executive director of Callen-
Lorde; Brooklyn Borough President
Eric Adams; and Rachel Loeb, the
chief operating offi cer of the New
York City Economic Development
Corporation.
Adams, a 2021 mayoral hopeful
who chipped in $1 million in
capital funding to the new facility,
delivered optimistic remarks
about the center’s new location just
weeks after he became embroiled
in a messy controversy stemming
from his oddly infl ammatory remarks
about Stonewall House, a
new LGBTQ-friendly affordable
housing building for seniors in
Fort Greene. Adams griped at the
Stonewall House opening that he
was “concerned about the diversity”
— despite the fact that 77 percent
of residents there are people of
color — and described it as a “pretty
building on NYCHA property.”
This time around, the former cop
appeared to try making amends:
He invoked Harvey Milk and made
attempts to connect with the
Brooklyn Community Pride Center’s
goals of serving marginalized
queer folks. He recalled his time
as a police captain in Manhattan’s
sixth precinct, which encompasses
the West Village and Greenwich
Village, and seeing queer youth on
Christopher Street who “could not
fi nd a safe haven anywhere else in
the city and they needed a place
where they could receive the services.”
“In this large community we
have in Brooklyn, we were unable
to give them the services,” he said,
saying many queer people have
historically had to go to Manhattan.
“Many people don’t know
when a young person decides to
tell a family member that they are
going to come out, they are ostracized.
What we’re doing today is
we are saying you do have a safe
haven. You have a place where you
can come to get services, workforce
development, and just sit down and
coalesce.”
Johnson, one of Adams’ rivals
in the race for mayor who also provided
funding to the new space on
behalf of the City Council, did not
attend — his out gay LGBTQ liaison,
John Blasco, was there — but
the speaker offered a written statement
voicing support for the new
location.
“The New York City Council has
always been committed to supporting
and investing in providing
critical services to the LGBTQ
community,” Johnson said. “The
addition of Brooklyn Community
Pride Center’s new headquarters
will help give LGBTQ New Yorkers
more access and empower them
through awareness and education.
As an openly gay man and the
Speaker, I know all too well how
important these centers are and I
congratulate Brooklyn Community
Pride Center on their new home.”
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