Alan Pierce, left and Lonzie Hershner, right

Plan to move Dallas’ parade, festival out of the gayborhood sparks controversy

Tammye Nash | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com

News that Dallas Tavern Guild officials plan to move the city’s annual Pride celebration back to June and out of the gayborhood sparked fierce debate on social media over the weekend.

Tavern Guild President Lonzie Hershner, owner of The Tin Room, Marty’s Live, Zippers and others, announced via a Facebook post Friday night, Oct. 5, that the move is in the works, and invited community members to attend a Tavern Guild meeting on Thursday, Nov. 1, in the Rose Room at S4 to discuss the plans and voice their opinions.

“Basically, it’s gotten down to the fact that the costs the city is forcing on us are getting out of hand,” Hershner said this week, noting that Tavern Guild members voted at a June meeting to go ahead with plans to move the Pride celebration to Fair Park, on the first weekend of June, although that likely cannot happen by next summer.

“The fact that we had a record year [in attendance] this year means if Pride keeps growing, the costs will be even more insane,” he continued, adding that the festival, held at Reverchon Park, and the parade on Cedar Springs Road have no room to grow now, which limits the potential for the celebration in the future.

He also noted that city officials “can only guarantee us the use of Reverchon Park [site of the Miller Lite Music Festival] through 2019,” because they are going to be turning the park into a baseball stadium for a minor league team.

Dallas Voice contacted the Dallas Parks and Recreation Department and the office of Councilman Adam Medrano, in whose district the park is located, but as of press time Thursday had not gotten verification that such plans are in the works.

“Of all the major cities, Dallas has one of the smallest Pride parades,” Hershner said. “We want to grow it into one of the largest Pride celebrations. We want Dallas to be in position to host World Pride eventually. We will never be able to do that if we keep the parade on Cedar Springs.”

Hershner said “Fair Park is the only thing that makes sense for our vision of Pride. Taking it to Fair Park will give us plenty of room to grow. It will give us the chance to bring in world-class entertainers to perform — someone like Lady Gaga or Pink, people we could never get to come perform on a tiny little stage in a field in the middle of a park.”

Hershner said the Tavern Guild’s five-year goal is to have the entirety of Fair Park for a full weekend, complete with a parade and a music festival and fireworks shows and more. The plan also calls for  holding a block party on Friday and/or Saturday on The Strip to help bring in customers for the bars and other stores in the gayborhood.

And, because Fair Park is the site each September and October of the State Fair of Texas, moving Pride there would necessitate moving the event from its traditional “third Sunday weekend in September” date.

Hershner said that “all of our existing major sponsors are 100 percent on board with the idea. They are all very excited about it.” And, he said, efforts underway to incorporate the Pride Committee as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, under the umbrella of the Tavern Guild’s existing 501(c)(4) status, will open the door to more avenues for sponsorships and funding that will allow the event to grow even larger.

But not everyone is as enthusiastic as Hershner and other supporters. And one of those most strongly in opposition is Alan Pierce, owner of The Round-Up Saloon and former Tavern Guild president.

“This was our 35th year having the parade right there on Cedar Springs, and this was a record-breaking year,” Pierce said this week. “This is the home of the parade, the tradition of it. The whole history of our community is right there on Cedar Springs, and now we have an historical marker there stating that that is the birthplace of the LGBT community in Dallas.

“If we move the parade out of Oak Lawn, then we are losing all that. We are losing our tradition,” he said. “If we move it to Fair Park, we then have to move it out of September, and I am completely against that. There is a reason we have our parade in September, and we would lose that tradition, too.”

“Yes, the city does make it more difficult each year. Yes, the city costs us more every year,” Pierce continued. “But we have always managed to increase our sponsorships to cover the increase in costs. And we’ve had a lot of great new sponsors coming in. Andrews [Distributing Company] has been wonderful to us for a long time now. And now we have Toyota, and others, too.”

Pierce said he understands the desire to grow the parade and the surrounding celebration, but he doesn’t think Fair Park will allow for that growth, at least not as far as the parade is concerned. “I have been to Fair Park for the State Fair, and I have seen the little parade they have there each night. There’s barely room for that parade on the streets in the park. I just don’t see any way they can have a parade with 100 entries in Fair Park.”

He pointed to a suggestion by former City Councilman Ed Oakley as a way to grow the parade without moving it from Cedar Springs. He said Oakley is exploring the possibility of moving the parade’s starting point to Cedar Springs Road and Turtle Creek Boulevard, and then traveling down Cedar Springs toward Love Field.

Hershner, however, said that option is also subject to the same limits the city puts on the length and time of the parade now.

Pierce is also concerned that supporters of the move don’t actually have any details on how much it would cost to stage the celebration in Fair Park, because control of that facility is in the process of being handed over to a private corporation.

Hershner acknowledged that firm estimates are not yet available because the management change is not complete, but insisted that the costs could easily be made up in savings from not having to pay for city-mandated elements of the celebration as it exists now.

Pierce said he was not at the June meeting when Tavern Guild members voted on the plan, and he is angry that they had voted to go ahead with a plan to move the parade, rather than to study options first.

“I am just furious about it,” he said. “Without any numbers whatsoever, they just voted to proceed with it. I tried to get it modified, to at least wait and study it. But it’s a done deal as far as they are concerned.”