Starting Thursday, more than 100,000 people will flock to Grant Park for each of the four days of Lollapalooza, the first iteration of the festival during Mayor Brandon Johnson’s tenure.
The music festival promises to be the largest attraction in terms of attendance in a summer that’s already seen several high-profile happenings in the downtown area: the NASCAR street race and Soldier Field concerts by global superstars Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran. Chicago police said they would be ready for the mega-event.
And the mood among some residents and at some businesses near the park as Lollapalooza approached might best be described as cautiously optimistic on the security front.
At a luxury condo tower near the park, resident Dawn Urso said she has lived in the building for 10 years and seen her share of festivals.
“There’s always craziness in the street. That’s why I live upstairs,” Urso said. “We feel really well guarded in here.”
Speaking to reporters Wednesday at City Hall, Johnson said the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications — formerly led by Johnson’s chief of staff, Rich Guidice — has “done a remarkable job over the course of these 12 weeks getting me up to speed” on the city’s plans and preparations.
“Those particular dynamics are well in place, scaling up of course, because we are anticipating a larger crowd,” Johnson said. “But I’m confident that the structures that have been put in place, it’s gonna make for an incredible, these next four days, five days.”
In a statement Wednesday, the Chicago Police Department said officers have participated in “tabletop exercises and workshops” with the city’s other emergency departments in advance of the festival. Additional officers will be assigned to the downtown area throughout the weekend “to safeguard all concertgoers, as well as those who live and work in the area.”
One police source familiar with department plans but not authorized to speak publicly said “hundreds” of additional officers — including those assigned to district tactical teams and the department’s Community Safety Team — will be working tiered shifts during the festival.
While the threat of violence is the priority for law enforcement working the festival, first responders will also be on alert for medical emergencies, often brought on by the summer heat and an overindulgence of alcohol and recreational drugs. In 2018, 160 festival attendees were hospitalized, city officials said at the time. The year before, more than 230 concertgoers were taken to nearby hospitals.
Urso said she has learned to not pull into her garage at the end of the day during the festival, when tens of thousands of people suddenly fill the Loop’s streets. She knows to listen for the Star Wars theme song marking the beginning of the fest and to peep at the physically exhausted throng for a laugh on Sunday night as it wraps.
“They look so cooked when they’re done. And all their costumes are disheveled,” she said. “My favorite part is when they shut off the music.”
Chicago’s more homegrown musicians also note when the fest arrives.
Arthur Riley on Wednesday was at the corner of Monroe Street and Michigan Avenue where he usually plays Chicago blues and classic rock on his worn, black Fender Stratocaster. He said he just got his van fixed and needed money, the street performer said.
He’s not expecting the big bucks to roll in during Lollapalooza. While the crowds of concert-going young people “are never any trouble,” he said, they don’t have paper bills.
“One of the main reasons is they’re not wearing hardly anything,” he said. “No one’s really carrying cash.”
However, the festivalgoers do love to dance, he said. He might look up from his guitar to find eight people dancing and singing at his spot.
Police and the city’s emergency managers have different concerns.
The threat of a mass casualty event during Lollapalooza was especially top of mind in 2022, the year a rooftop shooter killed seven and wounded dozens more at the Fourth of July parade in suburban Highland Park.
Chicago police and emergency officials said they reviewed that tragedy before taking steps to prevent a copycat scenario.
But the event did not unfold without further reminders of Lollapalooza’s high stakes for public safety. According to police and prosecutors, a festival security guard cooked up a phony mass shooting threat so she could leave work early during the second day of the festival.
The guard, Janya B. Williams, then 19, was charged with three counts of making a terrorist threat and two counts of making a false report. Cook County court records show she reached a deal with prosecutors last month, pleading guilty to one count of making a false report, a felony. She was sentenced to two years of probation.
The 2023 festival also comes as police and Johnson have faced criticism for their response to impromptu youth gatherings in the center of the city, which have sometimes led to disturbances and mass arrests.
The throngs of young concertgoers will descend on Lollapalooza just days after Chicago police officers arrested 40 people, the majority of them adolescents, who mobbed a convenience store, blocked traffic and started a series of skirmishes near Roosevelt Road and Canal Street in the South Loop. Police said several guns were recovered as well.
The “teen trend” gatherings, loosely organized get-togethers spawned on social media, have proved to be a vexing problem for city leaders for at least a decade.
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Brian Henderson, a doorman at Urso’s building, said the biggest annoyance he expects to deal with are festival attendees looking for a bathroom. The building locks its Michigan Avenue door for the festival, he said.
At Exile in Bookville, a bookstore located on the second floor of the Grant Park-facing Fine Arts Building, books on music line the wall by the door. The shop sells vinyl records and is even named after an album.
“Lollapalooza is typically pretty great for us,” owner Kristen Enola Gilbert said, as opposed to the NASCAR event, which some business owners and Chicago museums said had a negative impact on foot traffic.
The music festival isn’t as disruptive, Gilbert added.
The crowd that comes in the shop during Lollapalooza ranges from parents needing a break to “kids that are going to their first music festival and have had too many cocktails,” she said.
Chicago Tribune’s A.D. Quig contributed.
