By BOB KECSKEMETY
Richard Gray has announced that he is leaving the Fort Lauderdale area and moving, at least part time, to Dallas, Texas. One must wonder: is there anyone who can do as much as Richard has done to make the Greater Fort Lauderdale area the gay tourist Mecca he has?
In the early 1960s, Ft. Lauderdale was a sleepy little seaside town with a reputation only as a tourist trap and a spring break destination. The 1960’s movie “Where the Boys Are” depicted Fort Lauderdale as a party town – at least six weeks out of the year – the place to go for spring break. After the movie came out, each year saw the number of spring breakers coming to Ft. Lauderdale for a holiday grow exponentially until it reached a point in the early 1980’s that the crowds (most of them intoxicated) became uncontrollable and the city stopped promoting itself as the “spring break capital” and worked to discourage the large groups migrating to the city each spring right before Easter.
With the spring break crowd gone,
the city had lost its identity and tourist base and became, once again, a city you drive through on your way to Miami.
One of the people who did vacation here was Richard Gray, a financier from London who worked out of his company’s New York office. He found Fort Lauderdale was a great place to vacation and, in 1991, decided to move to Fort Lauderdale.
At that time, the very few gay accommodations that were available were mostly sleazy-looking dives. Gray decided that he could do better. He purchased a small hotel near the beach, totally renovated the property, adding a new standard of service that could only be found in your most exclusive resorts, and called his property The Royal Palms. With that opening, he set a new standard for gay accommodations, not only locally but worldwide. The Royal Palms became the first gay guest house to achieve a 5-star rating.
Over the years, other gay tourists would eventually come to Fort Lauderdale and stay at The Royal Palms, and some of those tourists would also fall in love with the area and decide to open their own gay guesthouses – many of them trying to adopt the same standards Gray had set for his own property.
In 1996, Gray approached Nicki Grossman, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau, about promoting Fort Lauderdale as a LGBT vacation destination.
“He came to me and some of our staff,” said Grossman, “and said there is gold in the hills and he sat down with us and talked with us and told us how loyal the LGBT market can be; about how lucrative it could be and how friendly we would become if we embraced that traveling public. He then went out persuading the destination as a whole – the other hoteliers and some of our attraction folks – that we all really needed to be part of this new marketing strategy. He brought us a significant new business that last year brought us nearly a million visitors and an expenditure of nearly a billion dollars. I would say that’s a very big impact.”
The “gay initiative” campaign started with $35,000, and this year allotted $500,000. Gray became gay liaison to the County’s Tourist Development Council and vice president of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association. Gray became the first openly gay person to sit on the board of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau and, in 2001, the County made him a “hometown hero” for his travel and tourism work.
“When Richard and I went to London for the travel marketplace, which is one of the largest in the world,” said Roger Handevidt, former owner of Orton Terrace, a small guesthouse next door to The Royal Palms, “the CVB gave us our own table to promote gay tourism. We were told that we were getting more contacts and more people wanting to know about Fort Lauderdale than all the other tables. The CVB backed us and helped us in every way and I guarantee you we would not have gotten that far without Richard’s help.”
Handevidt added that “up to that point, seats on the CVB had always been reserved for managers of the big hotels. Richard changed all that. He is so respected and has done such a good job representing the gay community. It wasn’t because of who he knew, but because of what he knew and how he presented it.”
In 2008, Gray decided to semi-retire. He opened up a travel/tourism consulting firm and sold The Royal Palms. However, the people who bought The Royal Palms did not keep up with the same standards and the visitors to the resort who came back year after year rapidly declined. The Royal Palms went into bankruptcy in 2010 and was purchased later that year by a company called Pan Capital out of Sweden. The principals of Pan Capital asked Gray if he would return to The Royal Palms and bring it back to the same quality it originally had.
Pan Capital also had their eyes on other properties along the beach and other areas and started purchasing them as the nation’s economy floundered.
Gray was given the task of combining a couple of the newly-acquired properties and combining them into one, renovating the properties (Gray likes to refer to it as a modern ‘edgy’ look) and the new Royal Palms opened earlier this year just a block away from the original property.
The new Royal Palms is more than double the size of the original property, has two pools, a spa, a gymnasium, an outdoor bar and a restaurant. However, the new property also has the same high standards (if not higher) that Gray insisted upon in the original Royal Palms. The new property became an instant success.
Also original photography done by local photographer, Dennis Dean, hangs in each room.
“Throughout the years, he’s always enjoyed my work and he thought it would be sleek and sexy to have original photography and he approached me and I jumped on the chance and I said ‘absolutely’,” said Dean. “It started in the rooms, then pictures were added to the gym and spa. It’s like having my own gallery in one of the best resorts in the world.”
With the other properties purchased by Pan Capital, Gray started the creation of North Beach Village, a new concept for the beach area just off of A1A south of Sunrise Boulevard.
“North Beach Village adds another dimension,” said Gray, “where you create a walking area with shops and art galleries off the beach which the area currently doesn’t have. There will also be fountains, a giant chess board and food stations.”
However, now Gray has decided to move on and leave Fort Lauderdale for a period of time. “My partner landed this humongous job in Dallas – it was a job of a lifetime,” said Gray. He said that he has accomplished what he set out to do, re-establishing The Royal Palms and North Beach Village, along with the marketing and public relations for all the properties.
“Fort Lauderdale is in my blood,” said Gray. “I love Fort Lauderdale and that’s why I still want to be part of it. The door is still open for me here and I’m not giving up on Fort Lauderdale.” Gray says that he’s more proud of what he has done in turning Fort Lauderdale into a gay travel Mecca than he even is with the work he has done with The Royal Palms because it benefits so many more people.
Several months ago, Handevidt also sold his property, Orton Terrace, to Pan Capital, which will be combined with the original Royal Palms, renovated and reopened as Hotel Lush Royale, a new gay resort.
“He is a consummate professional in every sense of the word,” said Dennis Dean, “in his public, private and business life. He’s been a major asset to the city of Fort Lauderdale and the gay community.”
“I think it will be huge loss to this community,” said Handevidt. “I’ve been there through much of that with him and I’ve seen stuff that other people haven’t seen or are aware of – the fight he had to do to overcome some ignorance.”
“I don’t think anybody is going to try to fill his shoes,” concluded Grossman. “I think what we need to do now is pay homage to what he has created and we’ll work as hard as we can to stay on that marketing plan. That’s what we have to do. That’s what he expects of us. That’s what he leaves behind. This [Gray’s hard work] wasn’t done to be a flash in the pan; it wasn’t done to make a statement then run and hide from the statement. This is now what we are. We learned how to be a welcoming community and a better-than-expected LGBT destination.
“I understand why he’s going. I know that it’s important to him and his family and I wish him nothing but joy and happiness in the future.”
