21-May-10 – With one lawsuit settled and another still pending, House of Blues is hoping recent changes in management and security will bring more harmony to Marina City.

Earlier this year, Ryan Shea, a general manager with Live Nation, Inc. – a live entertainment company that has owned House of Blues since November 2006 – took over the Chicago venue from Jim Jablonski, who had been GM since January 2009 and before that from 1999 to 2006.

According to marketing coordinator Mary White, Jablonski (left, in a photo from 2004) “left House of Blues to attend to his mother’s estate after her passing earlier this year and to take time traveling.”

Shea met on May 13 with 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, a meeting Reilly called “very productive.”

“I really climbed up their backside last fall after the horrendous season we had with them,” says Reilly, referring to a May 16, 2009 shooting on State Street following a late-night rap concert at House of Blues, an alleged assault of a woman by a HOB security officer on July 20, a stabbing on September 8 following a Jay-Z concert, and another assault of a young woman by a security officer on October 12 after a Hanson concert.

According to Reilly, there are about 12 new managers at Marina City’s House of Blues, including Shea, who relocated to Chicago from Washington, D.C. The changes to their security staff include new people and new training – a rigorous certification program Reilly described as “the best in the business.”

The alderman says he has commitments from HOB, in writing, to increase security around the perimeter of the property, and manage more aggressively how the public enters and exits.

“And they’re not just blowing smoke,” he says. The changes, which started in January, were discussed between House of Blues, Chicago police, City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, and Alderman Reilly’s office.

“I was really impressed with what they came up with. They brought in folks that had managed much larger venues like Alpine Valley to head this up. And they acknowledged, they said look, we admit we really blew it. We’re embarrassed as a brand, Live Nation, and that we’re not going to do that anymore.”

Settlement reached in October incident

In April, a settlement was reached in a lawsuit involving a former security officer at HOB who plead guilty to misdemeanor battery of a 23-year-old woman, Brittney Hernandez, which was captured on cell phone video. While terms of the settlement were not disclosed, Hernandez had been seeking at least $100,000.

The officer, Darrel Gibson (left), was sentenced to a year of court supervision and anger management counseling.

Another lawsuit, filed just four days before the assault by Gibson, is still pending. It accuses another HOB security officer, Rikki Jones, of assaulting Kristin Chopp at a concert on July 20, 2009. Chopp is seeking $50,000 but progress in that lawsuit has been slowed by trouble serving Jones with a court summons. Meanwhile, a schedule for discovery – an exchange of documents between plaintiff and defendant – has been worked out and a status hearing is set for July 15.

Gibson was let go shortly after the incident. According to Alderman Reilly, HOB has since fired most of its security staff and created a new human resources department to give applicants for security jobs a more rigorous background check.

What Reilly understood about the old hiring practices was that “it was basically word of mouth, like friend-of-a-friend hires. Their head of security was, like, hiring his buddies. A lot of them had a criminal history.”

“They had plenty of bodies,” says Reilly about HOB security, “but they weren’t professional and they weren’t handling it right.”

HOB general manager Ryan Shea did not respond to two requests for an interview.

(Above) 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly speaks with constituents outside McCormick Bridgehouse on May 14. Reilly recently got married. According to his May 15 newsletter, he married Kristin Donels on April 30 in Sanibel, located on an island in southwest Florida.

 Related story: Settlement in assault near HOB caught on video