Chester Pride Acquire A New Apartment Business

Chester Pride is pleased to announce they have acquired a popular self-catering apartment business in the heart of the city. This is part of the charity’s aim to become financially self-sufficient and develop their revenues to sit alongside key sponsorships and partners. This financial independence will be used by Chester Pride to fund its annual pride event, family fun days, the ‘JUST ASK’ helpline, and ‘BOX PROJECT’ that offers free condoms and menstrual products at a number of venues across the city. This new holiday lets business builds on the opening of Chester Pride’s Rainbow Tea Rooms cafe on Bridge Street Chester last year.

The popular cThis new venture will be overseen by Chester Pride Chair Warren Lee Allmark, who has a vast wealth of knowledge and experience in business development and business management. Warren has been a part of Chester Pride since 2012 in several volunteer roles, before becoming Chair of Chester Pride in 2018.

Warren says: “Chester Pride like most charities is facing sharp rising costs, and uncertainties in the current economic climate. My long-term plan has been to create sustainable and diverse revenue streams to support the long term operation of our charity. We’ve already seen great success following changes to our event last year, and the opening of the Rainbow Tea Rooms. The support from the local population has been fantastic, much more than we forecasted, alongside amazing. Part of the tea rooms success is working with local businesses to offer fresh, local; quality produce as can be found from suppliers like Cake Chester and Arden Meats & Chesses. The tea rooms also went on to win a CH1 BID Customer service award for the best coffee shop/ café in the 2022 awards. We aim to bring that success to our latest venture – operating our new holiday apartments. We plan to continue to strengthen our revenue into our charity, which will help grow our support work and events for the LGBTQ+ community in Chester and surrounding areas. I’m pleased to be able to the vast amount of knowledge and experience of myself, my fellow Trustees, and our Committee members, to make sure Pride has a colourful and vibrate future.”

Chester Pride which has become a staple in the cultural offerings of Chester since it’s start in 2013. The annual celebration of the LGBTQ+ community is now the city’s largest non-race day event, and its return in 2023 is shaping up to be even more vibrant. Chester Pride’s success, however, could not happen without the amazing community spirit that can be found in Chester, and the acceptance of diversity that has grown over the ten years of the charity’s work.

Warren added: “We are pleased to see and work with many other events happening in the heart of the city which are also growing in strength thanks to the amazing community and hard working local champions of the city. We’d particularly like to highlight Chester BID, Marketing Cheshire, Jen McAndrew of Garden Quarter Consulting, We Love Good Times, and social media giants Tony Chester & Chester’s Biggest Community Noticeboard who have all been fantastic allies and assets in promoting what we and others do for the city”