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Strolling past the deserted storefronts of Tijuana’s Avenida Revolucion, Sean Zullo remembers different times, when bars were full and the area bustled with U.S. visitors. Now the Southern California native is on a quest to revive the city’s decaying tourist strip by catering to members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities on both sides of the border.

“I believe the timing is good,” said Zullo, 43, a Long Beach entrepreneur who moved to Tijuana eight months ago. “There is no tourism. The market is completely untapped, unorganized; there’s no one filling that niche.”

Driven by this vision, Zullo is organizing Tijuana’s first Gay Pride Festival, to be held June 19 and 20 at the northern end of Avenida Revolucion, center of a small, informal gay district. It will feature music, food, cultural events and presentations by social-service organizations from Baja California and California. And, Zullo hopes, it will bring as many as 10,000 people to the area, not only uniting the city’s fractured gay community but changing attitudes among the population at large.

Zullo, the founder and executive director of Choices Baja, said he has been promoting the event as an economic opportunity, not as “an activist statement.” But when he first approached city tourism authorities, “they basically laughed at me and said, ‘You want us to start promoting gay and lesbian tourism?’?”

His proposal comes as Tijuana’s iconic tourist strip has been struggling for survival after years of declining U.S. tourism. Few sectors of the Baja California tourism industry have suffered as much since 2001, the result of more stringent U.S. border security measures, the economic downturn and drug-related violence. Ceturmex, a local merchants group, estimates that 80 percent of the storefronts are empty.

Baja California’s tourism secretariat reports a 23 percent overall drop in Baja border crossings between 2006 and 2009. But in the first four months of the year, the number of U.S. citizens crossing has risen by 25 percent over the same period last year, according to figures provided to the state by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Still, areas such as Avenida Revolucion and downtown Rosarito Beach that have catered to the traditional U.S. tourist market have been devastated. Also struggling is the coastal real estate market, where sales plunged as U.S. buyers lost equity in their properties north of the border and no longer could invest in second homes.

Other areas have prevailed, said Jose Avelar, head of Tijuana’s Tourism and Conventions Committee.

“Our national market never declined,” Avelar said.

Also, the city’s lower prices have continued to draw a steady stream of U.S. Latinos who drive down for medical services, weddings and quinceañeras. Now the state government, with an eye toward America’s baby boomers, has launched a major effort to promote medical tourism.

Zullo’s timing is good in many respects, said Max Mejía, a longtime Tijuana gay-rights activist and cultural promoter who has been a key supporter of the festival. Members of Mexico’s gay community are feeling empowered as never before, with the legalization of same-sex marriage in Mexico City late last year.

After years of decline, Avenida Revolucion has seen signs of revival. Local artists have begun setting up studios in empty storefronts, and a bar scene popular with young people is beginning to flourish on Sixth Street. A well-known businessman plans to reopen a shuttered restaurant known for the Caesar salad, first served in Tijuana. At Plaza Santa Cecilia, three gay bars are a beachhead for a growing clientele in the area.

“We recognize the economic productivity of this community,” said Martín Muñoz Aviles, a restaurant owner and head of the plaza’s merchant association, which is backing the festival.

“What the festival does is fill a vacuum,” said the tourism committee’s Avelar.

The committee is among the event’s sponsors, along with the municipal government, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the Baja California Human Rights office and Grupo Modelo, a Mexican brewery.

Even the Avenida Revolucion merchants association, Ceturmex, has come around after some initial reluctance. Members have been displeased with the annual gay-pride march, finding the participants’ behavior out of line and their attitude defiant, said Andrés Méndez, the group’s coordinator. But “the festival is something very separate,” Méndez said.

“It’s led by professionals and they’ve created the conditions that make it family-oriented,” he said.

Zullo speaks little Spanish and has hired two assistants to help him run the festival. Choices Baja’s headquarters is the third floor of a building across from Tijuana’s Wax Museum. Zullo sleeps and works in the converted office space, with large picture windows that look out on gritty urban scenes and the international border.

Though he’s a foreigner, it feels like a sort of homecoming to Zullo. Growing up, he had frequently visited Avenida Revolucion. Three years ago, he reconnected with the city, when he came for gastric bypass surgery and a tummy tuck, and began looking for opportunities.

Zullo, the founder and chief executive of a chain of drug, alcohol and mental health treatment facilities in Long Beach, Santa Ana and Los Angeles , said he was bored with meetings and looking for a challenge. As a UCLA graduate and former Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, he has traveled extensively, and saw Tijuana as an interesting possibility.

Where some would see ravaged, abandoned buildings, Zullo now sees possibilities.

“This could be a great property, to remake it into a gay- and lesbian-interest business, a restaurant, an Internet cafe for travelers,” he said recently, appraising a white structure with hints of art deco.

“I remember going to these bars as a college student, and this whole Revolucion area was 24 hours, lots of people coming down here all the time,” he said.

Back then, the city wouldn’t have wanted a gay bar, but times have changed.

“They’re now willing to try different things,” Zullo said. “I see a great business opportunity.”