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With their usual lack of healthy reportorial skepticism about Walmart on the Lake, both Chicago dailies, assorted TV stations and other local media earlier this week regurgitated a press release from Lollapalooza promoters C3 Presents assuring residents that this years post-concert clean-up of Grant Park will not linger into the fall as last years did, and that it will cost a mere $150,000 versus the alleged $1 million tab for 2011.

Can we imagine journalists taking anything a politician says at face value, much lessheavens forbid!Drew Peterson? Sources say the repairs will take a lot longer and cost much more than has been reported. Still, Lollapalooza consistently gets a pass and the sunniest of statements are repeated without question.

Before the festival began, we took several preventative steps to protect sensitive areas of the park and limit the potential for damage, the Sun-Times quoted C3 majordomo Charlie Jones as saying in his prepared statement. Now, were determined to put the park in better shape than it was before Lollapalooza.

C3 Presents said much of the work to seed, resod and otherwise rebeautify the north end of the park from the effects of the three-day festival with about 300,000 attendees will take place over the next week to 10 days, added the Tribuneand this despite an Aug. 4 deluge [that] forced Grant Park to be briefly evacuated.

As per usual, the Chicago Park District and the toothless watchdog group the Grant Park Conservancy readily agreed that, yes, everything is just swell, and absolutely, they sure do love Lollapalooza!

One unasked question, however, is obvious just in those brief quotes above: Why are repairs to the park only beginning to take place over the next week to 10 days, a week and a half after the concert ended?

There might be a good answer, but Chicagoans never will know if no one asks the question. Nor will they know that Lollapaloozas deal with the Park Districtboth the old one and the new one that keeps the concert in the citys front yard in perpetuityis unique among all the agreements the city makes with festivals and other private events in the public parks for not imposing a deadline for clean-up or levying the usual steep fines that kick in if a park is not restored within 24 hours.

An even more significant fact that most Chicagoans will not realizeand I missed it in a recent story as well, until a reader reminded me that Id already reported it in the initial stories about the Emanuel administrations new version of the Lollapalooza dealis that C3 and the Park District now engage an independent third party to assess the post-concert damage and put a dollar figure on making the repairs, after which C3 pays the Park District to make the repairs itself.

Under the old deal, the Austin, Texas-based concert promoters both paid for and performed the restoration work.

Here is the language from the new contract: Within a reasonable time following the conclusion of each Festival, the independent third-party shall assess the condition of the Festival Area and establish a cost of repairing and restoring the Festival Area to its Pre-Festival Condition. Upon such determination by the independent third party, C3 shall immediately pay to the CPD [Chicago Park District] an amount equal to such repair and restoration costs. C3 shall be financially responsible for all reasonable costs related to repairing and restoring the Festival Area to its pre-Festival condition.

See original here:
Grant Park clean-up: Taking Lollapalooza at its word