Living Out Palm Springs Nears Completion With Celebratory Beam Signing Ceremony

November 23, 2022

PALM SPRINGS, CA—Living Out Palm Springs, the elegant LGBTQ+ active adult retirement community, celebrated a major milestone on November 15th with a beam signing ceremony celebrating the placement of the building’s final structural beam.

Community officials, LGBTQ+ activists, developers and future residents of Living Out Palm Springs gathered to be a part of the beam signing and get a glimpse of the remarkable work that has been underway since the groundbreaking ceremony last fall.

“With the support of the Palm Springs community, it is incredible to witness the progress that has been made for what will be a life-changing residential development for LGBTQ+ seniors and allies,” said chairman of Living Out, Paul Alanis. “The dedication and hard work of all involved to bring to life these vibrant, safe and welcoming set of homes is another step to address the needs of the LGBTQ+ seniors. As our flagship location, this will be a model for the expansion of Living Out communities across the country.”

With the grand opening set for the spring of 2023, Living Out is excited to announce the name of its on-premises restaurant, led by world renowned chefs and restaurateurs, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. The menu will showcase the latest and greatest ingredients discovered on their travels—with a seasonal southern California approach. The name, Alice B., was inspired by the legendary California-born author Alice B. Toklas, who wrote (amongst other things) a memoir disguised as a cookbook chronicling her life with her partner Gertrude Stein. Toklas and Stein shared a publicly acknowledged and enduring relationship for nearly four decades, and as members of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, hosted regular salons attended by relative “unknowns,” who would go on to become some of the world’s most influential and celebrated artists and writers.

“We are incredibly excited to open our new restaurant, Alice B., and bring our cuisine to Palm Springs,” said Feniger. “It’s been an absolute dream of mine to open a restaurant with fantastic food, [a] full bar and live music, so we were thrilled to be the culinary team behind Living Out’s full-service restaurant and piano bar.”

In addition to the ceremony, the highly-anticipated Living Out wing names were unveiled. The naming honors historical LGBTQ+ groundbreakers, including:

• Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon—lifelong feminists and gay rights activists whose work included cofounding the Daughters of Bilitis, forming the Council on Religion and the Homosexual and serving in the White House Conference on Aging. After being together for 52 years, Martin and Lyon were the first same-sex couple to be married in San Francisco in 2004—and again in 2006 when the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.
• Carl Bean—an American singer and AIDS and LGBTQ+ activist, the founder of the Minority AIDS Project in Los Angeles in 1985 and the founding prelate of the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, which is a liberal protestant denomination that is particularly welcoming to LGBTQ+ African Americans. Archbishop Bean lived his life openly and dedicated his efforts to providing aid to underserved members of society—and, in particular, providing a safe place for LGBTQ+ people of faith.
• Connie Norman—self-proclaimed “AIDS Diva” who was a pioneering AIDS, gay and transgender rights activist with ACT UP/LA in the late 1980s and early 1990s, long before being a transgender woman was remotely accepted by even the gay community. She worked on the passage of AB101 to prohibit employer discrimination based on sexual orientation, and hosted the first daily commercial talk radio show about gay issues in Los Angeles.

“Del, Phyllis, Carl and Connie each dedicated their lives to improving the quality of LGBTQ+ lives,” said CEO of Living Out, Loren Ostrow. “We are thrilled to be able to honor their work and their memory by naming the neighborhoods of our new community [after] those whose shoulders we stand on today.”

Living Out Palm Springs will be an all-encompassing community with a full-service restaurant and bar; state-of-the-art fitness center; private hair, manicure and pedicure salon; movie screening room; community, game, card and art studio room; resort-style pool and spas; dog park and much more.