Lollapalooza promoter says festival expansion will spread out crowd, protect Grant Park

Q: Whose idea was it to expand the festival?

A: It’s been something that’s been talked about between us and the Park District for years. We have always agreed to grow this festival responsibly. And last year when we sold out all three days, it sparked a conversation about public safety and patron experience. Certain components of the festival have grown really fast, specifically the Perry’s Place electronic area. It was completely packed the entire time last year. We left a mark on the park in that area. We knew that area was going to grow and we needed to find a new home, and there were areas across the street. And with 75,000 people a day, there are parts of the park that get bottlenecked. With the expansion, we moved some stages, including the Citi stage off Balbo, and moved it across Columbus.

Q: How will this affect the number of tickets you sell?

A: They are giving us a much larger capacity. We are 15 to 20 percent (actually 44 percent) larger in space, so they’ve increased the capacity accordingly. The capacity is now around 95,000 and we are not going to sell that. I doubt very seriously we will sell that. Would it be great to be able to? Of course. But we have a theory of growing this festival responsibly, and we will set a higher number than last year but it won’t be as high as 95,000. And after it’s over, we will adjust accordingly each year depending on how things go and fans respond.

Q: But you could sell as many as 95,000 tickets this year?

A: That is the capacity in our rental agreement, based on the size and acreage. Will we sell that out? No, we will not. We will cap it well before then. I don’t know the number yet, but we will look at it with our staff and police department, and we may get to that number next year. But we will cap it short of that this year. We will have that number (capacity for this year) a month out (before the festival).

Q: Did you feel it was too crowded last year?

A: The park can definitely hold it. It’s up to us to program it accordingly to disperse the crowd. We do our best to disperse the crowd. Last year we had some heat on the northern end of the park because some of those bands got a lot bigger after we booked them. Butler Field (at the north end of Grant Park) is 20 to 30 percent smaller than Hutchinson Field (in the south end), so we put the larger acts on Hutchinson for crowd dispersal. But last year we had Kings of Leon on the north end, and the crowd was pretty heavy. They got bigger after we booked them, they were arguably the hottest band of the summer after we booked them, and the crowd got pretty big.

Q: Where will the stages be relocated across Columbus?

A: Perry’s stage will move across, and the Citi stage that was on the street last year, we will move across the street. There are two green spaces that flank either side of Congress. One is behind Lincoln Memorial statue, near the modern wing, the other kitty-corner from upper Hutchinson Field. We’ll put the stages in those two spots. We’ll also expand our costumer experience stuff, add some art installations over there, and our green street area that has some educational components will move across the street and become much larger.

Q: Shutting down Columbus Drive for the weekend is a pretty major move. What will go there?

A: Columbus is closed a lot during the summer. The systems are in place to do it. There will be no structures or stages on Columbus. There will be art installations, an information booth, and we will pull a high percentage of the portable restrooms out in that area, which will make them more accessible to clean-up trucks. We won’t close the street till Thursday after traffic and it will reopen Monday morning, so there won’t be much disruption.

greg@gregkot.com