Site of the future LGBT Community Center in Corpus Christi (Google maps)

The Coastal Bend Wellness Foundation plans to build an LGBT Community Center in Corpus Christi that will open in 2019, the Corpus Christi Caller Times reported. This will be the sixth LGBT community center in Texas.

Bill Hoelscher, CEO of CBWF, told the newspaper his agency decided to open the center because “We saw that people often didn’t feel safe or didn’t have a place to feel safe.”

To fund the center, CBWF plans to raise $100,000 a year in the community.

CBWF already offers HIV/AIDS care, haswomen’s health programs, substance abuse programs and primary healthcare. CBWF has a “long-standing history of providing services to those in our community that are often disenfranchised, taking on causes to fill gaps in services that no other agency provides,” according to its website.

The new LGBT community center will be on Holly Road, which is near the intersection of South Padre Island Drive and Crosstown Expressway.

— David Taffet