Rae Leiner, right, executive director of the Newburgh LGBTQ+ Center, gestures toward elected officials who attended the center's grand opening at its new location on South William Street in the City of Newburgh on Saturday evening. [PHOTOS BY LANA BELLAMY/TIMES HERALD-RECORD] ▲ Phoenix Gayle talks about the history of the Newburgh LGBTQ+ Center on Saturday evening. ▲

CITY OF NEWBURGH - The Newburgh LGBTQ Center has a place to call home.

Until Saturday, members of the organization had to bounce around to different locations for events and meetings. The center's executive director, Rae Leiner, said they used to hold meetings in coffee shops or various community-organizing spaces around the City of Newburgh.

For a few months over the summer, the center had a temporary home at The Moon: Infoshop and Community Space on Liberty Street. But The Moon was forced to move out of its location in July.

Vincent Cianni, founder of the Newburgh Community Photo Project, recently stepped in to offer the center some of his studio space at 102 South William St. for free until its members could accumulate enough money for rent payments, Leiner said.

More than 100 people filtered in and out of the center's grand opening event at the studio Saturday evening, including several elected officials.

The Newburgh LGBTQ Center is one of the few resource hubs of its kind in the mid-Hudson.

"What some of our elders tell us is that our struggle is old," Laura Brown-Rivera said before reading through the group's mission statement.

"Our vision is to stake a claim by building sustainable and equitable society for all of our members of the LGBTQ-spectrum and our allies in the Hudson Valley," Rivera said.

The group started organizing in 2016, but Leiner said members temporarily lost some of their momentum when Donald Trump was elected president.

"When the election happened, all of us were just dead," she said. "We didn't talk. We talked informally, but we didn't reconvene the group because we were depressed. I was depressed."

But Leiner and the center's co-founder, Maria Ramirez, eventually found a way to push the group forward, member Phoenix Gayle said during the event.

"They saw the need and wants in this community to see people of color, queer people of color, be represented, to be trained, to be led, and to be uplifted," Gayle said.

lbellamy@th-record.com