Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot touts new Lollapalooza contract even as details have been scarce

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday the new 10-year Lollapalooza contract is better for the city than the existing decadelong agreement, even as many details of the deal have not been made public.

“Obviously, we know a lot more about the economics and, frankly, what logistics are involved, so we used that learning and put that into this contract,” Lightfoot said at an unrelated news conference Monday as she compared the new contract to the agreement inked in 2012.

“The contract is structured for us to share in the wealth, so in other words, we’ve got a base, but as things get better and, hopefully, they will, meaning as the revenues improve year over year, we get to share in that with Lolla. So we’re really partners in this together, and I think having that stability, so frankly, they can book their artists years in advance really is to the benefit not only to them, but also a benefit to us.”

Lightfoot also called festival organizer C3 Presents “phenomenal partners,” pointing out the company’s work funding arts programming in Chicago Public Schools and collaborating with local nonprofit After School Matters.

This year’s edition of Lollapalooza wrapped up Sunday. On Monday, the city could not immediately say the number of arrests made, citations issued and concertgoers sent to local hospitals during the four-day event.

During the 2021 festival, 19 arrests, seven citations and 102 medical transports were logged. Before the pandemic, city representatives used to provide this information daily. Now they wait until the end of the festival to share these numbers.

About 100,000 people attend Lollapalooza for each of its four days.

Lightfoot on Sunday announced a new contract to keep Lollapalooza in Grant Park through at least 2032. According to Lightfoot’s office, C3 Presents and the Chicago Park District have an option to extend the contract for an additional five years. The existing contract has a one-year evergreen clause.

The new contract also increases the daily attendance cap to 115,000 festgoers, up from 100,000. There doesn’t appear to be a major park infrastructure investment by C3 in the new contract beyond refurbishment of the tennis courts, where organizers park their vehicles during the event.

The Park District is guaranteed to receive $2 million from C3 each year the four-day festival is held, but C3 has been paying much more than that over the years in fees. The city said C3 cut a check for $7.8 million for last year’s festival.

Jerry Mickelson, co-founder of Jam Productions and one of the deans of Chicago’s music scene, told the Tribune on Friday that he supports a Lollapalooza contract extension, in part because C3 Presents has shared the wealth with other venues, between aftershows and exposure of artists he represents. More than 60 Lollapalooza aftershows were scheduled across nearly two dozen Chicago venues over the weekend.

“They have created an event that is an amenity and an important part of bringing economic vitality to our city, so I’m in favor of this contract being renegotiated and extended because it’s a positive benefit to all that the city is trying to do,” Mickelson said. “The C3 folks provide many venues with aftershows. … They don’t need to be mandated to do that. They’re doing it voluntarily because they know it’s good for the city and the clubs.”

Mickelson, who claims credit for ushering Lollapalooza into Grant Park after he convinced city leaders to host Radiohead there in 2001, also wasn’t opposed to negotiations happening behind closed doors.

“You’ll never get a deal done if you have public input. That’s not the way the process works in any other city and it wouldn’t work in Chicago,” he said. City officials have done “a great job in protecting the city’s interests. You’ve got pros at the table. You can’t make this an open forum. That’s really difficult to get a deal done. It might scare people away.”

Parks advocates, however, say they would have welcomed the chance for more input.

Leslie Recht, the president of the Grant Park Advisory Council, says there’s room to balance the big events with the needs of the more than 100,000 people who live nearby.

“The secrecy” around contract negotiations and the exclusion of local aldermen from them “is unfortunate, because I think a lot of these things that we’re asking about wouldn’t negate Lolla or these other events necessarily, but they would be a benefit to the people who live downtown,” she said.

Among the advisory council’s requests: clear noise level limits and an obligation for all event organizers to pay for longer-term damage to the park.

“What we’ve been asking is to have various entities, Lolla and Sueños (a May Latino music festival C3 was also involved in), set aside money for capital repairs and improvements in Grant Park,” including going beyond fixing the tennis courts but a further pledge not to park on them, and money to fix up sidewalks and bridges. “We think that’s reasonable, because the more you use the park the more you wear it down.”

Beyond that, she says neighbors should have access to green space during major events, and that festival organizers should provide more health tents and bathroom facilities so attendees aren’t using alleyways as toilets.

Juanita Irizarry, executive director of the advocacy group Friends of the Parks, said Monday she has not seen the contract, nor was she involved in negotiations or solicited by city or Park District officials for the group’s take.

“It’s not surprising in light of the way this administration works that we would not have been contacted,” she said. “Transparency and real engagement with the public is not their strong suit.”

She expressed disappointment that the district prioritized “revenue generation” over concerns of local residents, who have called for better post-concert cleanup, noise monitoring, and more access to Grant Park.

“We’ve been hearing more and more lately from residents saying, ‘My goodness, the park is blocked off more often than not,’” Irizarry said.

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“It does seem that Lollapalooza should be responsible for capital investments for things that are impacted by their presence, whether it be sidewalks and courts that they park on and damage, if not immediately over the long term by using them in ways that were not anticipated, as well as fields, grassy areas that really should be redone to be able to accommodate this kind of use in the long term,” she added.

Irizarry expects her group to press more for the city to set up permanent festival grounds, as Milwaukee has done. The city’s 75-acre Henry Maier Festival Park is a former airstrip downtown along Lake Michigan. It plays host to the city’s ethnic and cultural festivals, running events and the annual multi-weekend Summerfest. Such festival grounds are built to withstand heavy traffic and the weight of stages, and they have permanent bathrooms and an electricity load to handle the power demands of festivals. Having a dedicated festival ground, Irizarry says, would ensure downtown residents have access to much-needed green space.

The extension of the Lollapalooza agreement and the recent announcement that NASCAR will stage an event in Grant Park next summer both highlight “how the city and the park district are seeing Grant Park as a green space for sale and willing to shut it all down with very little discussion,” she said.

Under the existing contract, C3 is on the hook for Grant Park cleanup after Lollapalooza. Once stages and equipment are removed this week, Park District officials will walk through the park to calculate this year’s tab. The bill is often hundreds of thousands of dollars, though this year’s festival benefited from pleasant weather.

Next year’s Lollapalooza is scheduled for Aug. 3-6. The event has been a mainstay in Grant Park since 2005.

tswartz@tribpub.com

aquig@chicagotribune.com