Filmmaker George Lucas is officially ending his campaign to build a museum in Chicago.
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They said the museum’s futuristic building – a sloping dune-like form topped with an observation deck resembling a floating disc -would have added to Chicago’s tradition of bold architecture.
The filmmaker said in a statement he would take his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art to California, but he did not name a specific location. He blamed Chicago’s Friends of the Parks group for suing to stop construction on what is now a parking lot for the NFL football stadium Soldier Field. The group argued the museum would be an eyesore on the waterfront and that it violated public use policy governing development on the shore of Lake Michigan. “The actions initiated by Friends of the Parks and their recent attempts to extract concessions from the city have effectively overridden approvals received from numerous democratically elected bodies of government”.
“No one benefits from continuing their seemingly unending litigation to protect a parking lot”, he said in a written statement.
And while we’re finally just getting the official word from the Lucas camp, anyone who has been paying attention to this fiasco for the last several months could have predicted that the museum for Chicago was dead long ago. “If the museum is forced to leave, it will be because of the Friends of the Parks and that is no victory for anyone”.
Despite widespread support of the project from Chicago’s cultural, business, labor, faith and community leaders and the public, a legal challenge filed by Friends of the Parks threatened to derail this once-in-a-generation opportunity.
The proposed museum would feature exhibitions of Lucas’ collection of paintings, illustrations and digital art from the blockbuster “Star Wars” movie franchise he started in 1977.
Ruiz said in the letter the group’s revenue-related neighborhood parks fund proposal was “completely outrageous”. Maybe LA can scoop up this museum on the rebound like it did with Boston’s thwarted Olympics bid. Los Angeles is also is one of the cities under consideration, they said.
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In the letter, Ruiz stated that the Friends’ list “might be the final nail in the coffin”.
