HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) – The LGBT Life Center opened a new building in Hampton Thursday.

Many elected officials were at the ribbon cutting at the new facility at 20 Settlers Landing Road, including both Newport News and Hampton mayors Phillip Jones and Donnie Tuck.

LGBT Life Center CEO Stacie Walls said even though the building is in Hampton, everyone is welcome.

“This is not just a Hampton thing. It’s not just a Newport News thing. The whole Peninsula is welcome,” Walls said. “We want people who identify as part of the community, people living with HIV, but then every other person out there can come here to find support.”

She also led a tour of the facility to show all it has to offer.

That includes a clinic, pharmacy, food pantry and additional spaces for the community and staff.

But she put an emphasis on the bulletproof windows they’ve installed.

That aspect is especially important considering their Norfolk location was just vandalized with hate speech last month.

“When we first designed this, we actually didn’t think about that safety component because it was before a lot of the things that have happened, like the Pulse shooting, all the nightclub shootings, all the anti-trans rhetoric,” Walls said. “So now we have appropriate security for the people who visit here as much as for the people who work here.”

She said opening the location took a lot of work, saying a cut of federal funds made it even harder.

“VDH and the state of Virginia sustained that cut from the CDC,” she said. “And so, their federal dollars were cut, and they passed it along to the service organizations which is unfortunate. We had hoped that the administration would backfill that funding loss. But this particular region sustained more than half of those cuts. And so, we will have less people out in the community doing outreach.”

She knows asking for help can be a hard step to take, so she has a message for the LGBTQ community.

“You will be greeted, and you will feel warm and welcome and affirmed,” Walls said. “Whatever you need, we’re going to help you find it.”

The building will be fully operational by the end of September.