Friday April 27, 2007 SGN.org |
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Volume 35 Issue 17 |
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Friday, Jul 04, 2008
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SOAP OPERA - The latest: Downtown parade and Capitol Hill parade/march and festival |
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| SOAP OPERA - The latest: Downtown parade and Capitol Hill parade/march and festival | ||
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by Robert Raketty -
SGN Staff Writer In a series of press releases beginning on Saturday, April 21, Seattle Out and Proud (SOAP), organizers of the Seattle Pride Parade and Festival in 2006, announced plans to cancel their events and declare bankruptcy. On Tuesday, April 24, the group changed course and, in a very surprising change of direction, announced that they will move ahead to organize a parade along Fourth Avenue on Sunday, June 24, but, unlike in many years past, no festival will be held at the end of the proposed parade. Troy Campbell, a SOAP board member and current media spokesperson, said the group did an about-face after having a closed-door meeting of the board on Tuesday evening in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. "The board had not met [about declaring bankruptcy] and there were still options available. Those needed to be discussed," he said. "We needed to collectively meet. The press release that went out earlier was done prematurely." SOAP hopes that by staging the parade again in 2007, they will stave off the need to declare bankruptcy and, perhaps, allow the organization to continue into future organizing. "The parade has always been a profitable part of what SOAP has produced," said Campbell. "Although it won't cover the entire cost of the debt that has been incurred, it can certainly start chipping away at it." SOAP owes the Seattle Center $100,026.33 plus accruing interest and, during a February public board meeting, admitted to having additional debts of approximately $40,000 that are owed to venders from 2005 and 2006. No list of vendors/creditors has been released. However, SOAP is being sued in several collection actions. Campbell said it was "high on the agenda" of SOAP to resolve its past due debts. "It may not happen this year, as far as paying the entire thing off, but it is definitely something we have to focus on and work toward doing," he said. Campbell declined to say how much cash that SOAP had on hand or how much the group expected to come in from parade sponsorships. "Right now, we are contacting all of the sponsors - in light of not having the festival. We, basically, need to renegotiate with them," he said. "Until we have commitments and contracts have been renegotiated, I don't want to release any sponsorship information at this time." For 2007, SOAP has begun to collect donations on its website, www.seattlepride.org. As of, press time on Thursday, the group had raised $1,425. SOAP is also planning six fundraisers between now and June 24, according to Campbell. An evening boat cruise on Puget Sound on Saturday, June 23, will be one of the fundraisers to benefit SOAP. IES PULLS $50,000 AND STOPS EVENT PLANNING, ENDING TENTATIVE AGREEMENT SOAP had to cancel plans to hold a festival after Independent Event Solutions (IES), organizers of the annual Capitol Hill Block Party in July, pulled out as the event planner of the festival and rescinded announced plans to make a $50,000 debt service payment to the Seattle Center as part of a partnership with SOAP. "IES was a crucial component of the [new] deal going forward and they were pulling out. As a result, there was nothing to go forward with," said Seattle Center Director of Productions John Merner. Under the terms of the agreement, an immediate payment of $50,000 and two additional payments of $25,000 each year were to be made to pay off SOAP's 2006 debt to the Seattle Center. SOAP was required to hire a professional event planner and sponsorship development firm. The Seattle Center was also to have had oversight of the 2007 festival budget. Campbell declined to elaborate about the end of the IES partnership, but did say that the business relationship between SOAP and IES was "no longer." He also said that Cindy Baccetti, a fundraising consultant to SOAP, continues to work with the group but that the terms of the relationship are "being negotiated at this time." Merner said he received an e-mail from IES co-owner Marcus Charles requesting a meeting with Seattle Center last week. At the meeting, Charles explained to Merner and Seattle Center Director Robert Nellams, the reasons behind IES's decision to pull out of the tentative agreement. "...[T]he financial risk was too great and ... the revenues and the expenses didn't line up for them," Merner said about their conversation. "They didn't think it was responsible both to themselves, to the Seattle Center and to the community to go forward with something that didn't appear like it had legs." Merner wrote a letter to SOAP this week notifying the organization that it would be forwarding their account to the City of Seattle law department for collections and would be releasing the date of the festival for booking of other events. Many calls and e-mails to IES co-owner Dave Meinert went unreturned by press time. LGBT CENTER PLANNING SUNDAY PARADE/MARCH AND QUEERFEST/PRIDE FESTIVAL On Monday, April 23, before SOAP changed their minds and resurrected their plans to organize the parade downtown, the Seattle LGBT Community Center applied to move its permit for a parade/march and festival on Seattle's Capitol Hill - originally set for Saturday, June 23 - to the long-standing traditional date of the last Sunday in June, which this year is June 24. Shannon Thomas, Executive Director of the Seattle LGBT Center, told the Seattle Gay News on Thursday that their plans to get approval to move their event to Sunday had not changed. A special events committee for the City of Seattle will review both the LGBT Center's request and SOAP's parade application during a May 9 meeting. "This has been a roller-coaster ride as of late, and now, the festival will have a community-based organization at the helm," said Thomas, in a written statement. "Our Pride planning is well-organized, financially accountable, and community inclusive, just as The Center has been since our opening." As it stands, the Seattle LGBT Community Center will be staging its second annual Raise Your Voice Parade/March, which will follow a route down Broadway to Volunteer Park, where the QueerFest/Pride Festival will be held. . The Raise Your Voice Parade/March will step-off at 11am. Floats and motorized vehicles will be allowed since the event will be a march/parade. Returning to the QueerFest/Pride Festival this year will be the showcase of musicians, spoken work artists and comedians. Animal Prufrock, The Erika Wright Band, Rainbow City Band, The Queen Bees, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Holly O'Reilly (formerly Figueroa), are a few of the confirmed acts. Tentatively, the ever popular Movie-in-the-Park at dusk, sponsored by Three Dollar Bill Cinema, organizers of the annual Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, will also return. The film Hairspray or The Incredible Shrinking Woman will be shown at dusk. Booths and a wide variety of food and beverage venders will be at QueerFest/Pride Festival this year. After all the operating costs are paid, proceeds from the events will go to support the Seattle LGBT Community Center. Thomas said that the Seattle LGBT Community Center's events will be properly accounted, transparent and public. Organizations and individuals interested in participating in the Raise Your Voice Parade/March should email march@seattlelgbt.org. Artists interested in a booth at QueerFest/Pride Festival, should email LGBTart@seattlelgbt.org. For other QueerFest/Pride Festival inquiries, contact Thomas by emailing info@seattlelgbt.org. *** Please stay tuned for more details. *** |
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