Lucas Museum Heading West

When we last checked in on the project, back in April, the City of Chicago was proposing a new site along the lakefront – McCormick Place's Lakeside Center – in order to appease the Friends of the Park, the group that has stood in the way of the project since it was announced. But that move would have cost the cash-strapped city upwards of $1.5 billion, and it didn't affect the position of FOTP. 

Lucas said in part, per the Chicago Tribune: "No one benefits from continuing their seemingly unending litigation to protect a parking lot. The actions initiated by Friends of Parks and their recent attempts to extract concessions from the city have effectively overridden approvals received from numerous democratically elected bodies of government."

Further, "We are deeply appreciative to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Gov. Bruce Rauner and countless others for all the time and effort they invested in trying to secure the museum for Chicago. While Chicago will not be home to the museum, my wife and I will continue to enthusiastically support a wide variety of educational and cultural activities throughout the city."

Lucas now sets his sight on California, where Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco have expressed interest in being host to the filmmaker's legacy museum. Ironically, the whole process started in San Francisco, but when that city's Presidio Trust denied him his desired site he moved the museum to Chicago and a striking design by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects.