Half of the building is a bright and busy collection of medical exam rooms and administrative offices as well as a couple of multipurpose areas. It seems apparent that those who work for Metropolitan Charities, Inc., which rents said half, like it here. Also known as Metro Wellness, the nonprofit is headquartered at the western edge of St. Petersburg’s diverse Kenwood neighborhood, diagonal from what was once Georgie’s Alibi.
The other half of the 47,000-square-foot building in which the organization operates, though, is a cavernous assortment of gutted and musty former offices and retail space.
Officials with the nonprofit, which provides a wide spectrum of specialized healthcare and other services for members of the LGBT community, plan on changing that.
They’re hoping to buy up the entire building, half of which they have been renting for four years, and expand the nonprofit’s ability to provide care and other crucial services.
The organization is recognizable well beyond the walls within which it operates. Several blocks away, in the Grand Central District, Metro Wellness in 2014 launched its LGBT Welcome Center, which advises visitors, hosts special-interest and youth groups and acts as a liaison to Metro services. And of the 15,000 clients Metro serves throughout the
Tampa Bay area, 8,000 are in Tampa and receive services out of the nonprofit’s Ybor City offices.
It’s fitting that the organization is headquartered in Kenwood; a neighborhood where many houses sport rainbow flags, it’s also the site of the Southeast’s largest Pride celebration.
“I think that makes us a real hub in this neighborhood and in the city itself,” said Metro Wellness CEO Lorraine Langlois.
Whether or not they can continue to meet the growing demand for specialized service at a time when HIV cases are inexplicably on the rise in Florida is the $500,000 question.
The building sits at the corner of Third Avenue North and 33rd Street, a city block recently bought by Altis Cardinal, a South Florida developer, with plans to develop part of it into an apartment complex. Metro’s agreement with its previous landlord included an option to buy the building it occupies, which Altis ultimately honored.
If Metro buys the facility, it can double the size of its clinic, expand its capacity for events and rent out office and retail space to LGBT-friendly businesses and nonprofits.
“Being that Kenwood is as diverse a neighborhood as it is, and that we have really been here for 23 years, in the community, it makes sense that it’s a fit for us to be here permanently and be in the community where services are needed,” said James Keane, Metro’s fundraising and events manager.
The nonprofit is currently under contract to buy the building, with a closing date set for April 15.
The rub? They have to come up with $500,000 as a down payment by that day. Otherwise they might be out of luck.
Advocates argue that the need for LGBT-friendly services is pressing, especially in Florida.
While other states have been seeing HIV diagnoses wane, Florida’s are again on the rise. Hillsborough County saw the biggest spike, with a 63 percent increase in new cases in 2015. Diagnoses in Pinellas bumped up some 32 percent that same year.
It’s unclear why that is.
In recent years, as treatment has helped make HIV/AIDS easier to live with, he said, the LGBT community has shifted its focus to fighting discrimination and celebrating diversity — which may have had unintended consequences as younger generations come of age with no grasp of how horrifying the AIDS epidemic was.
“At some point the messaging went from safe sex to something else,” Keane said. “This is a scary disease and you should be afraid of it, period.”
While Metro provides other healthcare services, testing for and treating HIV is a focal point of the organization. Anyone can walk into the facility and get tested (for HIV and other sexually transmitted disease), with immediate results in the case of HIV. In the event that the result is positive, counseling, prescription services and other resources are available on-site.
If the building buyout goes as planned, Metro hopes to double the size of its clinic space, increasing the number of patient intake rooms to 16.
They also hope to expand their ability to meet community needs in a social sense as well, as they already do with outings, social gatherings, classes and youth events.
The thought is that, despite what seem like positive changes when it comes to individuals who don’t adhere to traditional gender roles, members of the LGBT community still deal with intolerance or worse, such as “pastor protection” laws and bills barring transgender individuals from using public restrooms corresponding to the gender with which they identify.
And LGBT youth still face bullying from classmates, something Metro seeks to remedy with counseling and other behavioral health services.
“For the trans and gender-nonconforming identities, it’s really just what it was for gay people 20, 30 years ago,” said Lucas Wehle, a staffer who organizes support groups for LGBT youth and their families.
So having a place to go where people can feel safe from discrimination is crucial, staffers say.The expanded, upgraded building would add more space to better facilitate that.
Other renovations include a new roof (which they hope to outfit with solar panels, ultimately a cost-saving measure), 14 new air-conditioning units and replacement of the building’s 1970 windows.
As yet, the organization is staring down that April 15 deadline with not even half of the money raised.
Consultant Larry Biddle (disclosure: Biddle is married to CL Editor-in-Chief David Warner) is helping Metro raise money, as he did, successfully, for the Welcome Center. He said the best bet is local government dollars from Tampa and St. Petersburg, and from Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.
“There’s this interesting confluence, that Metro has this opportunity to build this place out at a time when the need is pretty obvious and it’s going to get greater,” he said.
So far, he’s gotten a tentative thumbs-up from St. Pete and Pinellas, which he said may give upwards of $50,000 and $200,000, respectively, though nothing is set in stone.
“We’re certainly exploring it,” said Pinellas County Commissioner Charlie Justice. “We haven’t come up with a number yet.”
But with the alarming jump in new HIV cases, officials recognize the need for an expanded facility.
“We want to react quickly and strongly,” Justice said, cautioning that the county has to do due diligence before it can sign off on the money.
It’s the two entities across the bay where Biddle said he’s running into problems, likely because the building purchase and renovation are taking place in Pinellas, and the benefits for Tampa and Hillsborough are as yet hard to quantify.
The issue may in part be one of bureaucratic semantics: namely, that the purchase and expansion constitute a capital project, not a program.
But Metro officials say the math behind purchasing the building is easy:
“It will help us free funds to provide more services in Tampa,” Keane said, because cost-saving measures like solar panels and office space rentals will help them reduce overhead.
And given the numbers — i.e., Hillsborough showing the largest spike in new HIV cases — the apparent lack of urgency is surprising.
A county spokeswoman said there are already efforts underway to prevent or tackle new cases, namely through federal Ryan White grants (which Pinellas — including Metro — Pasco and Hernando also receive) and through working with the state (which recently was criticized for quietly reducing Florida’s stated number of new HIV cases, possibly artificially).
“Hillsborough County has already been addressing these new cases through our partnership with the Department of Health,” said spokeswoman Kara Walker.
Hillsborough Commissioner Kevin Beckner said it’s not that the county doesn’t want to help Metro tackle HIV, it’s just a question of how to do it. Funding a purchase and build-out, even if it ultimately frees up money for services on both sides of the bay, might not go over well with those who pay taxes in Hillsborough County.
“That is a tougher sell for taxpayers, and it’d be a tougher sell for the majority of the people on our board,” said. “So we’re looking at specific things in Hillsborough County that we can do.”
A possibility may be to let Metro lease a county-owned building for a dollar a year (it pays nearly $200,000 in rent for the Ybor facility, Biddle said). It's not clear yet whether that’s even possible, but Beckner said he and his colleagues are working on finding a way to assist Metro. Still, that’s not likely to happen ahead of April 15.
“We are just in the preliminary stages of exploring what we might be able to do,” he said.
As for Tampa, Biddle said he’s heard nothing despite having hand-delivered a letter to Mayor Bob Buckhorn’s office outlining the urgency of the matter.
“I have not heard any answer to that request,” he said. “No response whatsoever.”
This, despite the mayor’s very public embrace of the LGBT community.
“The irony for me,” said Keane, “is that he was such a supporter of [Tampa] Pride. He was at the parade, he was a participant and he was a very strong vocal and financial supporter of that celebration and of bringing that celebration back to Tampa.”
At press time, Mayor Buckhorn’s office had not responded to CL’s request for comment.
As it stands, April 15 may come and go, and Metro may not see the full amount committed. Keane said he’s not sure what they’ll do if the community doesn’t come through. There may be some maneuvering that’ll buy them more time — deadline extensions, loans — but the uncertainty, staffers say, makes it tough for the nonprofit to meet an ever-increasing need in the community.
“I feel what’s at stake is a home, is a future for not only the LGBT, but [prevention of] HIV and other STDs and just good sexual health,” Langlois said, “which is really part of health in human beings.”
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2016.