Health |

Chicago alderman calls for crackdown on COVID-19 ‘superspreader’ hotel parties

With Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker cracking down on restaurants and bars around Chicago to try to stop coronavirus spread, aldermen argued Tuesday that large, unregulated parties in hotels and vacation rentals are increasingly causing trouble during this phase of the pandemic.

During Business Affairs Commissioner Rosa Escareno’s hearing on her department’s 2021 budget plan, several City Council members complained about the apparent disconnect between state rules requiring taverns to stop serving patrons inside and for those businesses and restaurants to stop serving alcohol by 11 p.m., and the proliferation of house and hotel parties they say are occurring around the city.

While Pritzker put the rules in place at the state level, Lightfoot has taken her own steps in recent weeks to toughen restrictions on bar and restaurant hours of operation and liquor sales times in response to rising case counts.

Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, said Tuesday that bars and restaurants have been doing a decent job enforcing COVID-19 distancing rules.

Private hotel parties, by contrast, largely fall outside the ability of the city to keep track of them. He said the tighter rules on bars and restaurants “only is going to grow the opportunity for these superspreader events in hotels, Airbnb and private residences.”

“We are incentivizing the use of hotel rooms downtown for these big parties,” Reilly said. “Hotel rates are cheap, and lots of kids are coming down here and renting out these hotel rooms on the weekend. And these aren’t parties of five or six people. We’re talking 60, 70, 80 people, and these are in licensed hotels.

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“Huge groups, totally unregulated, no masks, no distancing. Spreader events,” Reilly said. “Bars and restaurants are being penalized for all that bad behavior, in my view.”

Escareno said the Lightfoot administration is working with hotel operators and the Chicago Police Department to try to put better measures in place to help the hotels prevent such problems.

Escareno’s department is in charge of enforcing the bar and restaurant rules by issuing warnings and fines for violators. And Lightfoot supported an ordinance the council passed in September to put tougher regulations on place in vacation rentals.

But South Side Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, said Escareno needs to do more to crackdown on illegal vacation rental parties.

“We’re starting to see them pop up more in the community,” Taylor said.

Escareno’s hearing came as the city Tuesday began accepting applications for grants intended to help independent Chicago bars and restaurants struggling with shutdowns brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

jebyrne@chicagotribune.com

Twiter @_johnbyrne