CHICAGO _ The parade honoring the World Series champion Chicago Cubs will start at 10 a.m. Friday at Wrigley Field before ending with a noon rally in downtown Grant Park, the city and team announced Thursday.
The team will leave the ballpark at 10 a.m. and work its way south toward downtown, but city officials did not release the entire route.
Instead, the city is asking fans to view the parade at three locations: Addison Street from Sheffield to Pine Grove; North Michigan Avenue from Oak to Ohio streets; and Columbus Drive between Monroe Street and Balbo Avenue, according to a news release. It's unclear whether the team will take Lake Shore Drive south to get to the official route.
The rally will take place at Lower Hutchinson Field in Grant Park around noon. It's free and open to the public, but people will have to pass through security screening at entrances at Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard and Michigan and Congress Parkway. Attendees can bring in closed water bottles, and food vendors will set up shop.
Street closures could start as early as 4 a.m. Friday, and city officials urged people to take public transportation. The city also issued a warning: "There will be zero tolerance for drinking on the public way."
City Hall had been planning to hold a parade Monday if the Cubs won Game 7, but the team asked to move it up to Friday, a City Hall source said. Baseball general managers will gather Monday in Scottsdale, Ariz., for four days of meetings. And many of the players have offseason homes in other cities and in countries in Latin America, and would prefer not to wait around until next week before getting out of town.
Chicago Public Schools students won't have to play hooky to watch the parade _ Friday already was a scheduled day off.
Earlier, Mayor Rahm Emanuel told reporters the parade would be Friday, but details were still being ironed out.
"I just talked to Tom Ricketts. I talked to him yesterday a couple times, I talked to him this morning again," Emanuel said when asked about the parade. "I think all of us would just want 20 minutes of consistent sleep, then we're gonna _ Here's the thing: we're going to have a parade in Chicago that will stand the test of time. It will be a parade that 108 years have waited for. It will be a parade and a celebration that all of Chicago for 108 years in their mind's eye, have been envisioning. We're going to make it a reality in the city of Chicago."
Asked whether the Chicago River will be dyed blue, he said he would like to do that but wasn't certain if it would work. "I want to do a lot of things," Emanuel said.
The mayor's comments came at an unrelated economic development announcement on the South Side. Wearing a Cubs championship hat that he said he grabbed on the field during the celebration in Cleveland, Emanuel repeatedly pleaded for understanding, noting he only got 1 { hours of sleep after getting back to Chicago.
"Where am I, and how did I get here?" he joked at one point, adding that he forgot his kids' names at a parent-teacher conference at school Thursday.
