"It's like a Jewish organization running the Black Arts Festival," says Tom Irvin, who learned of the consulting contract at last month's meeting of the '96 PrideFest advisory committee. "Whenever someone is brought in from outside, it can be seen as an invasion of the community."
Irvin chaired the GLCC's PrideFest committee for four years before resigning in 1993, and he is currently president of the International PrideFest Committee. While dozens of cities around the globe hold gay-pride events, he says, Denver is the first to hire a "straight company" to help organize one.
According to Greg Rowley, GLCC executive director, the center decided to hire a management company because organizing PrideFest has become a bigger job than the GLCC and its volunteers can handle. The 1995 parade and festival drew nearly 60,000 people to Civic Center Park last June. "We've acknowledged here at the center that we're social workers, not event coordinators," he says.
Although a gay-owned company did make a bid for the job, Denver-based Commercial Recreation Management, a national events-planning company, came up with a better proposal, Rowley says. "I understand the issue about supporting and boosting the gay community," he adds. "But this event will still be 99 percent gay. It just so happens that the people who are going to set up the booths at three in the morning might be straight."
Michael Hait, the CRM consultant who will work on PrideFest, says that sexual orientation has nothing to do with the job his company was hired to perform. CRM has worked with gay causes before, including this year's AIDS walk, and it's also been involved with such projects as the Cherry Creek Arts Festival and the Utah Arts Festival. "It's a business decision, and we were determined to be best for their needs," he says of the deal with the GLCC. That contract, which was signed at the end of October, calls for CRM's fee to be "performance-based," Hait adds.
And according to some members of the gay community, PrideFest's performance could use improvement. "Frankly, I'm glad to see it happen," says FagMag editor Steve Cruz, adding that he has "no trouble" with the GLCC hiring a straight consulting firm. Now that Denver's gay-pride festival is more than a decade old, Cruz adds, it's time to move beyond a grassroots setup and the numerous organizational problems that have plagued the event in the past. "I think it became apparent to the PrideFest committee that this needed to be a more professional event," Cruz says.
Irvin notes that in other cities where gay-pride celebrations have outgrown the organizations that founded them, independent nonprofits have been set up to take over the events. He'd like to see that here, and Rowley agrees that strategy could be an option. "PrideFest is now the size for an independent nonprofit to pick it up," Rowley says. "I have no doubt that that will happen one day." But in the meantime, CRM will be helping run the show next summer.
Rowley maintains that being exclusionary would not benefit either PrideFest or the gay community in general. "At this point, it would be a bad thing to put up barriers like that," he says. "And I'm really excited about the prospect of straight people wanting to share in the event.
