LGBT Community Center Returns to Walker’s Point

Milwaukee LGBT Community Center. Photo taken May 12, 2026 by Graham Kilmer.

The Milwaukee LGBT Community Center has returned to Walker’s Point.

The center recently relocated to 161 S. 1st St. in the busy north end of the neighborhood. It moved there from 315 W. Court St. in the Haymarket neighborhood after the sudden loss of $900,000 in federal funding forced the organization to make some changes.

“Over the last year, we have had to make some hard decisions,” said Executive Director Ritchie Martin Jr. during a ribbon cutting Tuesday.

Martin thanked the donors, volunteers and elected officials who helped the organization survive and move to the new 1,820-square-foot space in Walker’s Point, which was most recently used by the BizStarts Community Market. “Thank you for believing that LGBTQ plus people deserve not only visibility, but infrastructure; not only celebration, but also sustainability; not only survival, but also investment,” Martin said

The new community center marks a return to the neighborhood that has long been the center of LGBTQ life in Milwaukee. The community center first opened in 1998 on S. 2nd St. It was a historically important year for the community, Martin said. That year, Matthew Shepard, a gay man in Wyoming, and Rita Hester, a Black transgender woman in Massachusetts, were murdered, and their deaths would inspire hate crime legislation and the creation of Transgender Day of Remembrance. It was also the year Tammy Baldwin won election to Congress as the first openly gay politician from Wisconsin.

“LGBTQ plus people were fighting for dignity, for legal recognition, for health care, for protection and for the simple right to exist openly and safely. HIV and AIDS were still devastating communities,” Martin said. “That history matters because institutions like this are not created during easy times.”

The community center provides youth and senior programming and resources, offers meals and maintains an LGBTQ library, among other things. It has also long been a locus of LGBTQ political advocacy and organizing.

Milwaukee Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa, the first openly gay member of the Milwaukee Common Council, said she became involved with the center as a young adult working on political issues, like a campaign against a same-sex marriage ban. Ald. Peter Burgelis said the first time he visited the Common Council chambers was to speak in favor of a resolution banning conversion therapy alongside representatives of the community center.

Local elected officials were not in short supply for the ribbon cutting. Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and Common Council President José G. Pérez all attended and offered remarks. The mayor issued a proclamation recognizing the center. He called it a “big deal” for the city and the community and applauded the “determination” of everyone involved in saving the center.

Rodriguez, who is running for governor and is a former nurse, celebrated the center as a community institution that supports the health of local residents by providing them a sense of belonging and helping them access resources. The community center helps local residents connect with free mental health and substance abuse counseling, and Martin said he has plans to one day expand the services to “a comprehensive, whole-person, medical and behavioral health model.”

Perez, who represents Walker’s Point on the council, said the LGBTQ community helps to make Walker’s Point a “thriving” neighborhood. “As the local alder, I just want to say, welcome back home.”

Dan Terrio, Milwaukee County’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion and a board member with the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project, remarked on the historical significance of Walker’s Point to the LGBTQ community.

“Milwaukee’s LGBTQ community first found itself, long before it had the freedom or the language to speak its name on this block more than a century ago, in the 1890s railway saloons and 1920s sailor bars [that] quietly became places where men seeking men, found connection, solidarity and each other,” Terrio said.

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