Mark Cuban Saved the Greenville St. Patrick's Day Parade: "I Didn't Want to See it Go Away"
Tell that quivering liver of yours to relax: The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day Parade marches on -- thanks to a guy who knows a little something about spring parades.
Mike Mezeul If he would be the grand marshal, they'd make him it for life.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has cut a $40,000 check to the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association to save the parade, while pledging another $25,000 to the parade's scholarship fund. GAABA President Jorge Levy reached out to Cuban via email on February 8. He wrote back exactly seven minutes later -- "Can't let it die," he told Levy -- and pledged the full amount. The money's already in the bank.
"It's a Dallas tradition that I have really enjoyed," Cuban told me via email today. "I didn't want to see it go away."
The parade started in 1979. It was supported financially by the Observer from 1997 to 2010, but in recent years, as the city required more police and more barricades, the cost of the parade sky-rocketed from less than $50,000 to close to six figures. The paper pulled out last year to concentrate on an annual St. Patrick's Day concert up the road, and this year GAABA was short about $40,000, its organizers said. If they didn't raise it by Friday, they said, they were pulling the plug.
Groundswell fundraising efforts never really swelled. A FundRazr campaign raised about $1,600, and a CrowdTilt campaign about $2,000 -- a grand of which came from the owners of CrowdTilt.
Cuban apparently declined an invitation to be the grand marshal, but he pledged something even better: He told Levy he was also open to supporting the parade in future years.
In related news, how cool would it be to have so much money that you could just save all the stuff you liked?
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