FILE -This file artist rendering released September 17, 2015, by the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art shows the proposed museum in Chicago. Mellody Hobson, wife of George Lucas, said that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, where exclusive collections from Star Wars films will be housed in, is now going to be built in a different state after a Chicago-based nonprofit organization objected against the city’s proposed alternative site. The city had asked a federal judge to stay the litigation for 30 days, and the group had agreed.
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The Friends of the Parks had filed a lawsuit, first challenging the original location for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art -a parking lot between McCormick Place and Solider Field. The lawsuit argued that the museum would violate the public use policy on the shore of Lake Michigan.
In a terse statement issued Tuesday afternoon, Hobson said: “From the beginning, this process has been co-opted and hijacked by a small special interest group”.
“We are now seriously pursuing locations outside of Chicago”, Hobson said in a statement. “If the museum is forced to leave, it will be because of the Friends of the Parks and that is no victory for anyone”.
Stay on topic – This helps keep the thread focused on the discussion at hand.
Nobody is about to tear down McCormick Place East – or, for that matter, the parking lot south of Soldier Field originally eyed for the Lucas Museum – just to plant more grass and trees.
Parts of Chicago’s McCormick Place convention complex now stand on the alternative location.
In their zeal to preserve what is, the Friends of the Parks refuse to see what could be.
The plan would create 12 acres of lakefront parkland by eliminating the architecturally distinguished but enormous Lakeside Center, which former Mayor Richard M. Daley once characterized as the lakefront’s “Berlin Wall”.
The plan requires the borrowing of almost $1.2 billion to replace the demolished structure, extending five taxes beyond their expiration date and state approval.
Melody Hobson is a native Chicagoan who supported plans to building the museum on the lakefront. The city, she said, “should not be held hostage to one man’s desires”. We can’t imagine they speak for all, or even most, lakefront preservationists this time. At an unrelated event Monday, he reminded reporters, “I don’t want to see people go see the Lucas museum in Los Angeles or San Francisco”. But Irizarry says “they continue to maintain they don’t want a site other than a lakefront site”.
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“Friends of the Parks has taken inconsistent and incoherent positions, making it impossible to work with them”, Shannon Breymaier, a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, said in a statement. On the other hand, if City Hall has completely written-off the parking lot site in pursuit of its expensive Lakeside Center plan, it would make sense for the group to halt its legal challenge since the new location would render their current suit moot.
