The last Sunset Strip Music Festival lost $1.045 million in a single year. It ended in 2014 with unpaid bills, a lawsuit, and a business association the City eventually dissolved. Monday night, West Hollywood voted to try again.
The City Council approved a contract with JJ-LA to produce a one-day music festival on Sunset Boulevard on Saturday, October 17, 2026. The vote was 3-2. Total cost: up to $4.69 million, all of it from unbudgeted General Fund reserves.
Mayor John Heilman, Vice Mayor Danny Hang, and Councilmember Lauren Meister voted yes. Councilmembers John Erickson and Chelsea Byers voted no.
It was Heilman and Hang who first brought the revival idea to the council last November. At the time Erickson was direct, his sense was no “music festival is going to save the Sunset Strip.” Monday night he still voted no, but he spent a good portion of the evening trying to make the event better before he did.
The Budget
The original budget was for $3.69 million. JJ-LA gets $2.8 million of that — $2.5 million for production and a $300,000 agency fee. Public safety, traffic control, and City services account for the balance of $890,000.
After much confusion and debate, the council wound up adding a contingency of up to $1 million at the last minute. The idea was to give JJ-LA room to pursue higher-caliber talent. But the extra $1 million is not just for talent. A lot of times, though not always, bigger talent means more security. More show production. The costs can add up. City Manager Jackie Rocco made it clear a few times that additional money was for everything associated with landing a bigger name or names — not just a talent fee.
What $550,000 Gets You
The original talent budget was $550,000. Erickson wanted to know what that actually meant. JJ-LA founder and executive producer Jeff Consoletti was direct about it.
“A very moderate to low estimate,” Consoletti said. Artists comparable to those at the Fonda, the Wiltern, the Palladium. Not the Hollywood Bowl. Not the Kia Forum. Not Crypto Arena.
Six months out, he added, schedules are largely set. “The pace of the business moves quickly, particularly when we’re already at or under a six-month timeline,” he said.
Consoletti was also clear about what JJ-LA was actually hired to do. “The budget that we were asked to create was to lay the groundwork, and to create something that was going back into the businesses, to begin to build something that, at a very baseline level, starts to create a long-term story for a longer vision on the Sunset Strip,” he said.
Erickson pushed for the contingency before casting his no vote. Talent deals don’t wait for council meeting cycles, he said. An artist wants an answer. Not in two weeks. Now.
“I am forewarning you right now that if you do not increase the budget for that, you are gonna get someone that… I won’t speak about the talent,” Erickson said. “It will fail.”
Public Comment
Wendy Goldman came to the microphone with questions. A West Hollywood resident and member of the Cynthia Sunset Neighborhood Watch, she wanted to know which businesses were actually surveyed. How the $375,000 LASD security figure was calculated. Whether other promoters — she named AEG and Goldenvoice — had been considered. Who gets final say on talent.
“I’d like to know how the amount was determined,” Goldman said of the security estimate. “How many officers, hours, and duties are included?”
Her neighborhood group was among those the council later directed staff to engage directly.
The Business Question
JJ-LA reached out to 220 businesses. Eighteen responded. The outreach window was roughly two and a half weeks. Five of the 18 were hotels. Four were music venues. Two more venues talked to Consoletti directly but skipped the survey.
Byers called it insufficient. “We’re throwing a $5 million plate of spaghetti at the wall,” she said.
She questioned the October 17 date too. Two weeks before Halloween. If the council already knew they wouldn’t want to compete with Halloween in future years, why start there now. “We’re making a significant investment in a data set, ultimately, that won’t produce an ability to just point in an evolved direction for a future event,” Byers said.
Why Now
Hang didn’t waver. The Strip has gone without long enough. “I want to tell the businesses on the Strip: we see you, we hear you, and we want to invest in you,” he said.
Heilman said the same thing but in a different way. “What we’re trying to do is invest in Sunset and try to bring back some of the energy that a lot of people feel is lost up on Sunset Boulevard,” he said.
Consoletti put the old festival’s peak attendance at roughly 8,000. The footprint between San Vicente and Doheny holds 10,000 to 12,000 safely. Push it to adjacent parking lots and you get to 15,000.
How It Ended Last Time
The original festival launched in 2008. The Sunset Strip Business Association ran it as a celebration of the corridor’s music legacy. Ozzy Osbourne headlined the first major street closure in 2009. Over seven years the lineup included Mötley Crüe, Slash, the Doors, Joan Jett, and Jane’s Addiction. Each year the festival gave out the Elmer Valentine Award — named for the late co-founder of the Whisky a Go Go, the Roxy, and the Rainbow Bar and Grill.
The losses started piling up in 2012. By the final year they hit $1.045 million. The SSBA owed $1.4 million to Nederlander Concerts and smaller vendors. It owed $250,000 to Mikael Maglieri of the Whisky and Rainbow, who had made a personal loan to keep it going. Nederlander sued. The City stripped the SSBA of its street banner advertising revenue — its last real income — in 2016. WEHOonline covered it at the time.
The City dissolved the SSBA’s control of the Sunset Strip BID shortly after. That was the end.
JJ-LA is not the SSBA. Consoletti’s company produces the annual OUTLOUD Music Festival at WeHo Pride and has held contracts with the Sunset Strip BID. The City holds all intellectual property rights under the new agreement. Financial controls are built in.
Whether that’s enough is what Monday’s vote was really about.
Cleo Smith, the City’s Event Services Manager, will serve as the City’s representative under the agreement. City Manager Jackie Rocco is authorized to negotiate and execute the contract.
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Perhaps it will coincide with the demolition of the Viper Room block.
This is a terrible idea and in no way is supposed to genuinely help the Sunset Strip. If the Council really wanted to help the Sunset Strip they wouldn’t try to rush an event to take place in 6 months. But I’m not convinced that a one day street fair is the way to get people to visit the Strip year round. How about doing a study where you actually wait to hear back from more than 18 businesses and see what would actually help them????? Perhaps there’s a better way to invest in the neighborhood than wasting 4.5 million… Read more »
So if the Sunset Strip is dead,then it must have died under the watch of the Erickson regime. A very sad admission.
But it is hard to see this as a credible investment given that it is April and the event is supposed to happen in October. This looks like a Council vanity project rather than a serious attempt to revive the Sunset Strip.
This should never have been approved as it was presented and definitely shouldn’t have been approved for an additional million dollars council asked for. City staff and JJLA didn’t ask to raise the amount. Everyone should understand that this is just a one day event 2 weeks before Halloween’s Carnivale. I always think of a Sunset Strip event should be summer based. Why was Oct 17 chosen. Five million dollars thrown away.
This event never went out for bid. It only went out to JJLA. This council is out of touch with reality and community needs
Well at least admitting that Sunset Strip is dead and nothing can bring it back is being honest, as far as just expecting any businesses to be able to accomplish that. The only thing that might be of any help would be more street events, but there’s absolutely no reason why they need to be these multi million dollar productions, that’s ridiculous. People just want somewhere festive to gather that’s affordable. All that’s needed is proper security, that’s your expense. Like the St. Patrick’s Day event they used to do coordinated with a couple of the bars that were there.