Lollapalooza will double the size of a stage devoted to DJs and electronic music at this year’s festival Aug 5-7 in Grant Park.The plans were revealed in an interview with Charlie Jones, one of the partners of Texas-based promoters C3 Presents, who said the electronic-music area has proven to be the fastest growing musical attraction at the festival since Lollapalooza’s 2005 debut in Grant Park. To accommodate the growth, the Perry’s Place stage will be moved to a softball field west of Columbus Avenue on the festival’s southern end across from Hutchinson Field, where the main stage is located. The tented Perry’s stage will be designed to accommodate more than 15,000 fans, double the size of last year’s location farther north. The lineup for the festival will be announced Tuesday, but the Tribune has reported that Girl Talk has been booked for Lollapalooza, a likely headliner for the Perry’s Stage.
Jones also previewed a number of safety tweaks throughout the festival, to accommodate what is expected to be a crowd at least equal to last year’s record-breaking three-day attendance of 240,000. Though capacity is capped each day at 95,000, promoters say they will be cautious about approaching that figure even as early sales are ahead of last year’s pace. “I think we will be consistent with last year’s attendance,” Jones said.Adjustments will be made to relieve bottlenecking that plagued the two northernmost stages on Butler Field, the promoter said. Fences and portable toilets will be moved to provide more space, and the busy food court on Jackson Avenue that had been adjacent to Butler will be shifted west to the Columbus Avenue area to open up the area. Columbus will once again remain an open thoroughfare to allow fans easier access from one side of the park to the other.Butler Field exits will be more clearly marked and lighted at night. In addition, there will be a DJ instead of a band performing at the Petrillo stage in Butler Field before the closing headlining performance each night at the far northern stage. “A couple years in a row we’ve had a band in that (Petrillo) slot that has become much bigger than we anticipated when we first booked them,” Jones said. “Because of that, we’ve gotten a really intense crowd at that intersection, so this year we’re trying to disperse it a bit by not booking a band in that slot.” Recent years have also seen a potentially dangerous crunch of fans in front of the main stage at Hutchinson Field for headliners such as Rage Against the Machine and Green Day. This year, Jones said, the festival will reconfigure the crowd barricades to relieve some of the congestion and allow more access for security and medical personnel.Chicago chef Graham Elliott has been scheduled to return as “culinary director” of the festival’s food venues. The chef will be among 2,000 personnel hired by the festival to oversee everything from catering and security to staging and clean-up.Lollapalooza has been under scrutiny from the Illinois Attorney General’s office for its so-called radius clauses, which restrict bands from playing within a certain local proximity before and after their festival date. Such clauses are common for major festivals and a constant source of controversy within local music communities negatively impacted by them. But Jones reiterated that the festival “has never turned down a request by a band to play a gig.” The festival contributes more than $1 million annually to the Parkways Foundation to improve city parks. According to a study conducted by Texas-based consulting firm Angelou Economics, the festival infused the Chicago economy with $89 million last year.
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