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Business takes up gay pride banner
Some in the Tampa business community fear a negative image from the county's ban on gay pride symbols.
By BILL DURYEA
Published June 22, 2005
TAMPA - On Monday night, in a small room down the hall from a church sanctuary draped in rainbow banners, several dozen business people, some gay, some straight, flexed muscles in the growing fight over the Hillsborough County Commission's ban on promoting gay pride.
A lesbian financial planner vowed to contact Jay Feaster, the Tampa Bay Lightning general manager.
"I go to his church, St. Stephen's Catholic in Valrico," said Catherine F. James, controller of Priority One Financial Services.
A gay clothing store owner, some of whose customers play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said he'd try to work them for access to owner Malcolm Glazer.
Michael Brill, an associate vice president at Raymond James, said he made it clear to his co-workers that "if you're working with people who discriminate against me, then don't come to me for help. They need to know how upset we are."
Moral outrage has driven opposition to the commission's 5-1 vote that requires government to "abstain from acknowledging, promoting or participating in gay pride events."
But in the wider business community, the outrage is linked to a fear that the region's economy may have been irreparably harmed.
"What happens when we don't have the Super Bowl here?" said Scott Farrell, a Tampa lawyer who is running for the congressional seat that Jim Davis will vacate. "Don't kid yourself. It could happen.
"That's a language that people understand," Farrell told the business people, part of a 700-strong gathering at Metropolitan Community Church on Monday. "They're not buying the human rights/civil rights issue, but they do understand economics."
Cities that have wrestled with controversies over gay rights laws have learned costly lessons.
For example, Cincinnati leaders passed a charter amendment in 1993 that specifically prohibited the city from passing any antidiscrimination laws based on sexual orientation.
But officials later said Cincinnati lost $21-million in convention business immediately after the law went into effect. They repealed it last year.
"It continued to be a barrier to doing business," said Julie Calvert, vice president at the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau. "There was not one group that said, "We want to come because you have this law on the books.' "
Hillsborough Commissioner Mark Sharpe, who ran for his commission seat on a probusiness platform, was among those who voted in favor of the measure last week.
He said Tuesday he didn't think the plan would have any impact on the business community.
"I wouldn't do anything that would harm our ability to compete economically," he said.
Some business leaders aren't so sure.
"It sends a terrible message both inside and outside the community," said Peter Kageyama, 40, president of CreativeTampaBay Inc., a nonprofit grass-roots group dedicated to promoting economic and community development. "This is the stuff companies find absolutely repugnant. "Why would I want to bring myself or my company there?' "
D.J. Finnegan, a gay employee of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., which just transferred several hundred employees from New York to Hillsborough County, said his bosses sent e-mails critical of the vote to the county commission.
"Realistically, my company can't move," Finnegan said. "But it's nice when you hear the company say, "We've got to respond.' "
CreativeTampaBay got started in 2003 on the heels of research by Richard Florida, who linked a city's economic vitality to its overall creativity. One of the leading indicators of a city's creativity is its diversity, he said, in particular its population of gays. "The vote says the leaders of the county are essentially intolerant," Richard Florida wrote in an e-mail over the weekend. "It is like putting up a sign and saying, "Creative people not welcome here.' "
Ben Wacksman, president and CEO of Capital Realty Investors LLC, said Monday, "Lifestyle is more important now than tax incentives to relocating companies."
A former Hillsborough County commissioner, Wacksman is a current member of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce's board of directors, which will meet Thursday. "The chamber needs to take a leadership role in seeing that our community is seen as tolerant and inclusive," he said.
Likewise, some business people argue, any perception that gays are treated as second-class citizens may encourage some of the region's most creative and affluent residents to leave for more welcoming cities.
"The impact it could have is on talented folks who are here and who have many alternatives for where they could go," said Paul Wilborn, manager of creative industries for the city of Tampa. "They're not obligated to stay."
No one is packing just yet.
For the past 15 years the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival has brought an average of 12,000 people to the Tampa Theatre over an 11-day run in October, generating $20,000 in concessions and rental fees for the movie house. Last year the total attendance was 13,000 and promoters expect that number to increase this fall, in part because of the notoriety of the County Commission's vote.
"The festival is not a political organization," said Mariruth Kennedy, president of Friends of the Festival Inc.'s board of directors, "but I have to think that people are going to rally around the festival."
Kennedy said the steady support of Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio "has not gone unnoticed."
Iorio addressed the festival crowd last October and received a standing ovation. Iorio has also come out against the recent commission vote.
But if the ideas bandied about at Monday's meeting are any indication, momentum is building for a strong response and the business community may not be able to avoid the fallout.
"It could be a tourism boycott," said David Costa, operations manager for Equality Florida, which organized Monday's meeting. "That's going to affect Tampa, Orlando, Pinellas."
As Calvert in Cincinnati knows, such notoriety is long-lasting.
"It won't go away."
Bill Duryea can be reached at duryea@sptimes.com or 813 610-1067. Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this story.
[Last modified June 22, 2005, 01:08:17]
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