| :: Cleveland will make a bid to host the 2014 Gay Games :: |
Cleveland Synergy Foundation
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| Synergy: The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects. |
Posted by Robert L. Smith/Plain Dealer Reporter
October 15, 2008 21:00PM
Categories: Real Time News
Cleveland will vie to host the 2014 Gay Games, a sporting event with a global
audience, and try to impress a lucrative demographic group that maybe knows little about
Northeast Ohio.
Promoters of the city's bid will fly to South Africa next week, where the Federation of Gay
Games is holding its annual meeting, and begin to sell Cleveland as a diverse, tolerant
city with good athletic venues.
Civic leaders stepped forward Wednesday to embrace the idea at a news conference at
the Hyatt Regency Cleveland-Arcade.
"We look forward to putting our best foot forward," said Ken Silliman, chief of staff to
Mayor Frank Jackson.
The Euclid Corridor transit project will be finished, he said, new businesses will have
opened on the marquee avenue, and the city should be ready to host games that drew
11,500 participants and tens of thousands of spectators to Chicago in 2006.
"It's going to be a wonderful greeting environment for the athletes if we can manage to
land this competition," Silliman said.
The quadrennial games were founded in San Francisco in 1982 by Olympic decathlete
Tom Waddell. They will unfold in Cologne, Germany, in 2010.
Cleveland's bid is being led by Brian Tavolier and W. Douglas Anderson, organizers of
North Coast Athletics Volleyball, a local 24-team league widely known in the gay
community.
Both men have helped to organize past Cleveland Pride parades, which celebrate the
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
They recently formed the Cleveland Synergy Foundation to lead the campaign for Gay
Games IX. The name echoes one of the game's primary goals, to create ties between the
gay and mainstream communities.
Wednesday's news conference illustrated some early synergy. It drew representatives of
City Hall, the convention and visitors bureau and the Greater Cleveland Sports
Commission.
"Cleveland is a perfect city to host these games," said Douglas, a competitive volleyball
player who retired to Cleveland from San Francisco. "We have a very progressive city
government. And we have wonderful, diverse people to host the world here."
Other qualities in the city's favor, he said, include a walkable downtown, good public
transportation, inexpensive hotels and lots of practice hosting similar-sized athletic events.
Cleveland hosted the NBC Gravity Games in 2002 and 2004, the International Children's
Games in 2004, and the NCAA Women's Final Four and the AST Dew Tour in 2007.
The city will welcome the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 2009 and the National
Senior Games in 2013.
Douglas acknowledged Cleveland lacks a reputation in the national and international gay
community, but David Gilbert, president of the sports commission, said that may not be a
deal breaker.
"No image is better than a bad image," Gilbert said.
Civic boosters said they welcome the chance to promote the region to a widely traveled
group that enjoys higher than average levels of education and affluence.
"We see this is a springboard," said Sharon Kobayashi, vice president of Positively
Cleveland. "We hope to make Cleveland a gay destination."
The foundation will make its formal pitch in March, when it will learn of the cities it is
competing against, Tavolier said. He added that a site selection team will probably visit
Cleveland next summer.
