Organizers of The Hangout Music Festival have requested access to more of the city’s public beach during the second annual event.

During Monday’s city council work session, Parks and Rec Director Grant Brown presented a request from Hangout Owner Shaul Zislin to modify the site plan for the upcoming festival. The plan would expand the sites eastern boundary even further east to include the city owned property knows as East Beach.

“Last week Mr. Zislin came to us with a good problem,” Brown said. “The attendance at this year’s Hangout Music Festival is expected to be at capacity, and he requested to extend the eastern most boundaries from the present line that is between Gulf Place and the Pink Pony Pub to a point further eastward.”

Brown said that the extension to the site plan would provide more beach space between the two main stages.

According to Zislin, all 35,000 tickets are expected to be sold, but he told Mayor Robert Craft and the city council that the expansion was not an effort to provide more space so that more tickets could be sold.

“A lot of people took a really good experience from our festival last year, and we want to make sure that we, as producers of the show, can give the same treatment to a much larger amount of people,” Zislin said. “That breathing room, that space to be able to walk around, and with some other changes we are doing to the site in order to enhance that fan experience, is very important. But we are not increasing the capacity.”

Councilwoman Carolyn Doughty said her only concern would be not having any public beach access available to those who wanted to go to the beach but no attend the festival.

Doughty also questioned if the expansion would create issues with police and fire department as it relates to their handling of issues that could arise.

Police Chief Edward Delmore said the expansion would not affect their ability to patrol the festival.

“No. Expanding the distance is not as significant as more people,” said Delmore.

Zislin said that even with the expansion, there would still be some public beach space available to those not attending the music festival.

Zislin also said that he owned a small parcel of property adjacent to the public beach and would be willing to make it available to the public as well, if need be.

Councilman Philip Harris, however, questioned if the city would be taking on additional liability if Zislin made his private beach area available to the public.

“If we label this area public beach, but it is not under our city management system, would we be assuming any liability?”

Mayor Craft said that permission had been granted by the U.S. Department of Conservation to close the beach according to the present site plan, but that a modification to the plan would require permission for the extended beach area.

Ticket sales have been impressive for the May 20-22 event. According to Zislin, tickets have been purchased from individuals in every state except for Idaho.

The council will vote on the measure during next week’s regular council meeting.