Orlando Sentinel
Gays' economic clout leaves stamp on
city
By Kelly
Brewington
Sentinel Staff Writer
April 15, 2002
When Debbie
Simmons created Central Florida's first directory of gay and lesbian business
owners in 1992, she had it printed on dark paper so it couldn't be
photocopied.
Gay merchants had agreed to start an alliance of gay and
lesbian business owners, but with one caveat: The public couldn't know about
it.
The first meetings of the network, named the Metropolitan Business
Association, were held in secret at the Radisson Hotel downtown and attracted
about a dozen professionals. Some refused to share their names; others parked
blocks away from the hotel.
"It took an act of courage to walk into those
meetings," said Tom Dyer, an Orlando attorney and publisher of Watermark, a
local gay and lesbian publication.
In the decade since that meeting, much
has changed. Gays have made a major economic impact in Central
Florida:
They've led the revitalization of once-neglected downtown
Orlando neighborhoods, from Thornton Park to Lake Eola Heights to
Colonialtown.
They've developed thriving gay-owned and gay-friendly
business districts in Thornton Park and the area surrounding Virginia Drive and
Mills Avenue, known as the ViMi District.
They've created an international reputation among gay
tourists, building Gay Days from a single day in 1991 into an annual event that
lures 125,000 gays to Central Florida each June, pumping an estimated $100
million into the region's economy.
But despite inroads in the business
world, many gays and lesbians in corporate circles say they dare not mention
their personal lives -- leaving their partners at home during company functions
and keeping their desks at work bare of family photos.
They fear being
fired, denied promotion or simply made to feel unwelcome because of their sexual
identity. And that, they say, is why they're asking Orlando to extend protection
to gays and lesbians under an anti-discrimination ordinance.
"Why, when
we follow the rules and contribute to society, aren't we protected against
discrimination at a job?" said Simmons, 41, co-owner of Shelbie Press and a
member of the Orlando Anti-Discrimination Ordinance
Committee.
Urban pioneers
While
gays and lesbians live and work throughout Central Florida, Orlando's
Colonialtown, Lake Eola Heights and Thornton Park are known as some of the most
popular neighborhoods among gays in the region. In Colonialtown, nearly half of
the unmarried couples who live together are same-sex.
Gays and lesbians
were among the pioneers of the gentrification that swept across these and other
downtown Orlando neighborhoods in the 1990s. Once dominated by run-down Cracker
homes and bungalows, the neighborhoods now boast restored homes and a burgeoning
number of small businesses and restaurants whose patrons and owners are from all
walks of life.
Orlando set the stage for the influx of gay homeowners in
the mid-1980s when the city made a concerted effort to preserve the residential
integrity of the neighborhoods with their brick streets and large oaks. The
city's decision turned an area that was a little ratty around the edges into a
high-rent district -- similar to gay-fueled, inner-city revitalizations
nationwide.
"In general, the gay community has been a significant driver
in the redevelopment effort. They like the urban setting, they recognize the
infrastructure, and they were higher risk-takers," said Tom Kohler, who until
recently headed Orlando's Community Redevelopment Agency.
In the 1990s,
real estate broker Phil Rampy seized the opportunity to invest in these largely
neglected communities and coined the name Thornton Park.
"There were
boarded-up buildings, no cars on the street, no pedestrians anywhere, and not
one open front porch," said Rampy, 40, who has rehabbed old buildings and
designed new ones such as Thornton Park Central, a mix of urban lofts and trendy
shops. "There was no reason to come out of your house."
Thornton Park
started more as a business idea than a conscious effort to define a gay
community, Rampy said. But he found a neighborhood tolerant enough to help
cultivate one.
"It was never a Bible-thumping neighborhood," he said. "It
always seemed to attract people who liked diversity."
Diverse
neighborhoods -- open to anyone who likes them, not just gays -- are what makes
downtown communities work, Rampy said.
Sheila Dean, 66, said she's
considering moving from MetroWest to a nearby retirement high-rise because of
its proximity to Thornton Park.
"I like diversified communities," she
said while eating lunch with a friend at Anthony's Pizza Café on Washington
Street. "I know people who wouldn't have moved here five years ago, but they
love it here now."
Gays have led gentrification movements across the
country, said Gary Gates, a research associate at the Urban Institute, a
public-policy think tank based in Washington.
In a study of 10 cities,
Gates found that gay men lived in some of the oldest homes, but in neighborhoods
that showed the biggest increases in housing values. Gay men tended to live in
areas with many restaurants and cultural activities, but not necessarily the
best schools, he said.
Gays generally have a higher discretionary income
because most don't have children, Gates found. But it doesn't mean most gays
earn more than heterosexuals; they just spend their money differently, he
said.
"There's the cliché idea that gay men want to renovate their homes
because they want it to be pretty. That's stereotypical," Gates said. "But it
does make sense that all people want to renovate their homes; gay men just have
a large portion of income to do that."
Small-business owners
In 1991, amid a gay business
scene limited mostly to bars, Bruce Ground arrived in Orlando and opened one of
Central Florida's first shops specifically aimed at gays.
Ground's Mills
Avenue store, Out and About Books, carried 1,400 titles ranging from
gay-oriented fiction to self-help books. He sold the store in February 2001 to
pursue other interests.
The beginning wasn't easy. When he wanted to
place an ad in a telephone book, an advertising saleswoman told Ground he
couldn't use the words "gay and lesbian." It wasn't appropriate, he said the
woman told him.
When the store first opened, there were prank calls and
ugly slurs. But Ground said he developed a thick skin. "It didn't bother me all
that much," said Ground, 39. "Most of the time I'd say, 'If you don't like the
store, there's the door.' "
The shops on Mills today range from antique
stores and coffee shops to Asian grocery stores and all-American diners such as
Chuck's Restaurant, a mainstay for 60 years. Not all are gay-owned, but the area
has a reputation for being gay-friendly.
"This is a neighborhood place
where everyone seems to look out for each other -- gay and straight," said
Georgina Courtley, 47, who has owned Chuck's for 10 years. "I've heard this has
been called a gay district, but we are all people. This is a nice family
community."
It's also a place where openly gay entrepreneurs, such as
28-year-old Jason Rose, have started businesses that reach throughout Central
Florida and beyond. Rose's coffee shop, called Jason and Paul's, opened on Mills
Avenue in January, and has a wholesale division that distributes coffee to
clients nationwide, including a Hooters in suburban New Jersey.
But in
the community at large, gay owners of small businesses and gays in corporate
settings say they walk a fine line.
Maitland attorney Larry Smith "came
out" at work five years ago. While his co-workers were supportive, Smith said,
many gays in the workplace feel they are straddling two worlds.
"They
feel they can't talk about family life or what they did over the weekend," said
Smith, 44. "And that comes with added stress for the employee. You can't be a
productive worker that way."
Bill Pease, a 43-year-old optician who is
homosexual, did not want to identify his business as gay because he fears
"people will back off." He prefers to describe his shop this way: "We are a
business in Orlando, and it just happens that one of the owners is
gay."
Among big business in the region, Walt Disney World is seen as an
ally of the gay community. Disney made headlines in 1996 when it became one of
the area's first major corporations to offer benefits to same-sex domestic
partners. Several other large companies with operations in the region, such as
Universal Orlando, followed suit.
When Disney took that initial step, it
became a target for high-profile boycotts by religious
conservatives.
Taking a public stand on gay issues can make you a target,
said Simmons, the Shelbie Press owner who's also involved in the campaign for an
anti-discrimination ordinance in Orlando: "Since I've been so vocal about the
ordinance, some days I wake up and wonder if this is the day we're going to be
firebombed."
Gays and
tourism
As Orlando's gay business district started to emerge a
decade ago, a group of gays and lesbians in the area began a social event at
Walt Disney World that became a display of economic clout.
In 1991, the
Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Community Center of Central Florida encouraged
members to head out to Disney World's Magic Kingdom on a particular day, wear
red, be seen and have fun.
While not necessarily a political statement,
the gathering helped a largely invisible community make itself known. And over
the years, Gay Days has grown -- largely through word of mouth and the Internet
-- to become a weeklong, internationally known event that attracts about 125,000
gay tourists, who spend an average of $800 per person.
The Gay Days crowd
is substantial -- larger than the 100,000 who flocked to Daytona Beach for Black
College Reunion during the weekend but far less than the half-million
Harley-Davidson fans who flood the area for Bike Week.
This year, Bud
Light has signed on to sponsor Gay Days, the first national brand to do so, said
Chris Alexander-Manley, 44, director of sales and marketing for Gay Days Inc.,
which operates gay-themed travel Web sites.
At $54 billion a year, the
gay-travel industry is huge, said Tom Roth, president of Community Marketing, a
San Francisco firm that helps the travel industry market to gays. A 2000 poll of
3,000 gay respondents revealed that one-third intended to spend at least $5,000
per person on travel in a year.
"Most of them are gay couples with no
kids," Roth said. "Without the responsibilities of children and college, they
have more discretionary income. In the gay community, that translates into
travel."
Despite Gay Days' success, it is something of a quandary for the
family-friendly theme parks. None has offered to sponsor the event, instead
saying their parks welcome all people.
"The parks have seen the
difference when Gay Days is here," Alexander-Manley said. "They know the
impact."
Still, Alexander-Manley hopes the attractions will more actively
embrace gays.
"Central Florida is the vacation capital of the world," he
said, "but it's not just the Cleaver family."
Kelly Brewington can be
reached at kbrewington@orlandosentinel.com or
407-420-6186.
Copyright © 2002, Orlando
Sentinel
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