Villa Park trustees press applicant on safety, insurance and logistics for proposed festival; chiefs say site is unsafe as proposed

The Village Board on Aug. 10 heard an appeal from JP Hochbaum after staff denied a permit for the "Off the Beaten Path" festival. Manager Rivas summarized the application timeline and said the April 2 submission and the July 16 department-head meeting left several items marked TBD. Rivas and the village attorney described subsequent materials submitted by the applicant but noted many required items remained incomplete.

Hochbaum told the board he believed his April application was effectively complete and that he had been making revisions after verbal guidance. He said he had an evacuation plan, parking agreements he described as covering more than 600 spaces, and a plan to recruit crowd-control volunteers. "We are aiming to have 50 to 60 crowd-control volunteers at the fest, well above the 10 to 20 requested at the meeting," he said.

Staff and public-safety chiefs raised unanswered life-safety questions. The fire chief said the proposed Rotary Park site lacks adequate ingress, egress and staging for emergency response, that evacuation in five minutes was unrealistic and that on-site EMS and a clear incident-command structure were not documented. "When you bring thousands of people into one location, small problems can become very large problems very quickly," the fire chief said, citing historical festival incidents as context. The police chief said the event would likely require about 15 officers and three supervisors and estimated a policing cost in the tens of thousands of dollars given current staffing challenges.

Village risk-management staff said the applicant’s certificate of insurance (general liability $1,000,000) was likely insufficient; HR/risk staff estimated a need between $4 million and $8 million in aggregate coverage depending on event details and transportation arrangements. Trustees discussed options including conditional approval with a strict list of items to be cleared by a deadline, shrinking the event size, changing the location, or postponing to spring 2027 to allow time to revise code and requirements.

Trustee Cordova moved for conditional approval subject to staff and chief sign‑offs on security, parking, insurance and emergency plans; Trustee Kumar seconded. Staff asked the applicant to submit finalized documentation by a firm deadline and warned that if key TBD items remained unresolved the board should not proceed. The applicant said he would work with staff; several trustees urged revising the special-event code to make requirements clearer for future applicants.