As Joliet awaits this weekend’s Electric Daisy Carnival, one of the country’s biggest electronic dance music festivals, many local officials have been emphasizing economics.
The festival’s promoter, Insomniac, has commissioned impact studies to encourage such expectations, touting profitable weekends for hotels, gas stations, restaurants and other local businesses.
But in San Bernardino, Calif., a city similar in size to Joliet, the claims of those studies ring hollow. Judi Penman, president and CEO of the San Bernardino Area Chamber of Commerce, fell silent when she heard the sum Insomniac claims its 2011 Nocturnal Wonderland concert brought to her county of roughly 2 million people.
“Eleven million?” Penman asked. “I don’t think so. It does fill some of the hotels and motels, but I don’t think that’s $11 million. They may or may not eat at some of the restaurants. … I doubt if they did any retail at all. They’re not going to go out and go shopping.”
Meanwhile, such rave-inspired events have also raised concerns about drug-related issues, and one public venue in California has banned them.
A 2010 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tied 18 emergency room visits and one death to a Los Angeles rave co-produced by the promoter behind Electric Daisy Carnival, which is set for a three-day Memorial Day weekend run at the Chicagoland Speedway beginning Friday. All 19 concertgoers had used MDMA, the drug commonly known as Ecstasy, the report said.
The CDC report urged public officials to be aware of the risks of rave-inspired events.
The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, examined records from 64 concerts produced since 2006 by either Insomniac CEO Pasquale Rotella or by another major promoter, Reza Gerami, and found documentation of at least 14 concertgoers dying from overdoses or other drug-related incidents. They also found scores of other drug-related medical emergencies and arrests.
Insomniac, which hopes to attract 30,000 people a day to the Speedway, said all attendees will be subject to a pat-down search and carded to make sure they are at least 18. The festival will have doctors, nurses and four ambulances on site, according to a safety plan filed with the city.
A communications firm representing Insomniac did not respond to requests for comment on the Los Angeles Times’ findings on drug-related problems. In interviews with the Tribune earlier this year, Rotella said electronic dance music is unfairly singled out.
“There are big events in this country, this world, whether it’s a marathon or a rock festival, and they all have safety issues,” he said. “People who think dance music is unique to these problems are not with the times and are misinformed 100 percent.”
Joliet police said Insomniac is paying for undercover officers, who will work to prevent attendees from bringing drugs into the concert. Chief Mike Trafton expressed confidence that the city can handle the event and will benefit as a result.
“It’s great for a city like Joliet, all the added tax revenue for restaurants and everything else,” Trafton said. “It’s good for the city in terms of economics, and the same for our guys. They’re (Insomniac) paying a good wage.”
He added: “This is new to us too. I guess we’ll all kind of learn from it.”
Joliet City Manager Thomas Thanas and the Joliet Police Department both said they had seen the CDC report. Thanas said he is aware of problems at other electronic music festivals and that — no matter how great the economic impact — Joliet would not host the event if officials were not confident they could keep it safe.
“If it’s not a safe event then we wouldn’t have it,” he said.
City Councilwoman Jan Hallums-Quillman, told of the CDC report, said, “It doesn’t make sense to reject (the event) out of hand based on something that happened three years ago.
“Sometimes you have to take a chance and see where it goes,” she said. “But we will not tolerate any type of drug activity at all.”
The city could have declined to host the concert, Thanas said. The Speedway is a private venue but the event requires several permits from the city.
Insomniac produces 250 music events a year for 2 million concertgoers, and its Las Vegas Electric Daisy Carnival attracted more than 300,000 people in 2012. Live Nation, the top North American concert promoter, is working with Insomniac on a London Electric Daisy Carnival this summer. This weekend’s event, which will combine DJs, fireworks, circus performers and amusement rides, is the first Electric Daisy Carnival for Chicagoland.
By the first week in May, the 200-room Holiday Inn in Joliet was “pretty much sold out” for Memorial Day weekend, said sales representative Sonia Chavez. However, Insomniac is also selling tickets to camp on the festival grounds and running shuttle buses for fans to and from Chicago, potentially diminishing the local economic impact.
Insomniac Chief Operating Officer Simon Rust Lamb told the City Council that the company expects “to see the restaurants, hotels, gas stations and other businesses benefiting,” though it’s too soon to say exactly how much. His presentation cited studies commissioned by Insomniac showing that its yearly concerts in Las Vegas bring the area $100 million to $200 million in revenue.
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But the Insomniac-commissioned study of the 2011 concert in San Bernardino, a closer comparison with Joliet, raised questions for University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson.
Sanderson reviewed the study, which said the amount of work created in the county by Nocturnal Wonderland was equivalent to 182 full-time jobs for one year. He concluded that any job creation resulting from the event would have little impact on the long-term economic health of the area.
“If I take their job-creation numbers and hours at face value,” he said, “it would work out to $11 an hour, which strongly suggests what kinds of job creation it is — parking cars and picking up trash.”
Jordan Levine of Beacon Economics said the $11 figure is correct but is likely skewed lower because not all earnings are factored into the formula.
Joliet’s unemployment rate was 12.7 percent in 2011, according to the American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, which looks at all residents 16 and older. Insomniac said in documents filed with the city that it hopes to make the festival an annual event.
Before the Joliet City Council voted to grant Insomniac a carnival permit, members received a memo from Thanas, the city manager, recommending they support the measure and predicting “that the event will generate substantial sales tax revenue and hotel tax revenue for the city.”
Thanas noted in an interview that other concerts also attract illegal drugs. “The fact that there may be a different drug of choice that is being used by some of the attendees, it really doesn’t change the way the Police Department approaches things,” he said. “They’ll be aggressive in making sure that safety is the most important part of the event.”
In some communities, however, public officials have questioned whether the revenues brought in by rave-inspired events outweigh the health and safety costs.
Nevada Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick is proposing legislation that would subject the Las Vegas Electric Daisy Carnival to an entertainment tax.
“They do bring revenue to our state,” she said. “But we still have to provide education, we still have to provide public safety, they utilize our emergency rooms.”
The Cow Palace, a state-run venue in Daly City, Calif., banned raves in 2010, the year two people died after overdosing on Ecstasy at an electronic dance music event not organized by Insomniac, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“We just couldn’t implement enough procedures to give us enough assurance that there wouldn’t be a repeat,” Joe Barkett, a former Cow Palace chief executive, told the Times.
Dr. Marc Futernick, medical director of emergency services at California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, told the Times that teenagers and young adults on Ecstasy overwhelmed his emergency room when raves were held at major venues.
The 18 hospitalized concert attendees mentioned in the 2010 CDC report had all used Ecstasy and were all hospitalized within 12 hours of the event. One was critically ill with multiple organ failures. The man who died had used Ecstasy along with several other drugs.
The Times identified the concert as a rave co-produced by Rotella at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
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