More than 71,000 fans descended on Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles during a two-day concert — Budweiser Made in America — featuring headliners John Mayer and Kanye West, along with Weezer, Iggy Azalea, Kendrick Lamar and South Gate’s own Cypress Hill.
The festival was marked with a slightly larger crowd on the second day and more than twice as many arrests and citations issued than on day one.
The Budweiser Made in America event, which featured about 30 solo performers and bands, was touted by Mayor Eric Garcetti as a way to show it’s possible to throw a “great party right here in the heart of the city.”
Sunday’s crowd of ticket holders was placed at 37,419, up from 34,374 Saturday, said Los Angeles police Officer J. Kim.
A total of 80 arrests or citations were reported Sunday, the concert’s second day, Kim said. There were three felonies, ten misdemeanors and 67 citations including 35 alcohol and traffic violations, she said. Earlier reports indicated one arrest was for battery and there were some narcotics arrests and parole violations.
Also Sunday, 49 people were treated for illness or injury and released at the festival while four were transported to hospitals, Kim said.
Twenty-nine arrests were reported on Saturday, the first day of the concert. In all, six people were arrested on Saturday for alleged felonies that were narcotics-related, according to Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Andy Neiman. The other 23 were arrested for misdemeanors, primarily alcohol offenses, according to Neiman.
Grand Park, the venue for the Made in America music festival, will remain closed to the public until Tuesday while it is cleaned up, authorities said.
Philadelphia was the site of a sister festival that featured some of the same performers.
Garcetti noted last week while touring the partially-built festival site that music fans are “traveling outside of L.A. to go to places … like Coachella, Austin or Philadelphia,” to attend concerts.
To remedy this, Garcetti said he reached out to the festival’s founder — rapper and entrepreneur Jay Z — to bring the concert to Los Angeles.
Previous Made in America events held in Philadelphia generated about $10 million in local spending, according to event organizers, and would likely be a $12 million boon to the Los Angeles economy, Garcetti said.
It also seemed fitting to throw a high-profile music festival in a city that is considered a hub of the music industry, Garcetti said.
Garcetti appeared on numerous radio stations to promote the Labor Day weekend event. And he said his hope was to dispel the city’s reputation as being wrapped up in bureaucratic red tape, noting that Made in America’s promoter Live Nation Worldwide Inc. has never produced a major music festival in Los Angeles even though the company is based here.
Angelenos may need to sit through traffic and endure other inconveniences, “but that’s not a reason not to do things, he said.
To reimburse costs to taxpayers, Live Nation agreed to pay $500,000 to the city to cover policing and related services for the concert. Live Nation also agreed to pay for any damage to public property.
Live Nation also will pay $600,000 for the use of the county-owned Grand Park, which is run by The Music
The festival had a large law enforcement presence from both the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Hundreds of LAPD officers patrolled the streets around the festival, while the sheriff’s department was responsible for festival areas on the county- owned Grand Park, LAPD Lt. Andy Neiman said.
The concert was unique in that it is “the first of this kind of festival that has been at this specific location,” he said, because Grand Park, which opened in 2012, “didn’t exist before,” Neiman said.
