Chicago May Lose The Lucas Museum If The Project Doesn't Get Its Original Site Today

By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 21, 2016 6:48PM

Designs for the Lucas Museum (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

Update, June 22: The city and Friends of the Parks didn't reach a compromise on the Lucas Museum yesterday, and the apocalypse isn't nigh. (Well, it sort of is, but George Lucas hasn't left Chicago in a huff.) The deadline described below was just about a Chicago Park District leader's "personal schedule," a spokesperson for the Chicago Park District told the Tribune The text he sent Friends of the Parks on Sunday, however, alluded to a "window [closing] forever" if the two parties hadn't worked anything out by Tuesday—a strong way to describe one's personal schedule.

The Lucas Museum will quit Chicago for good—after more than a year of tense negotiations with Friends of the Parks—if the project can't lock down access to its original site, a 17-acre stretch of lakefront near Soldier Field, Tuesday, an FOTP leader told the Tribune.

Friends of the Parks' executive director, Juanita Irizarry, told the Trib she has been polling FOTP board members by phone about whether they should drop their lawsuit, currently blocking Star Wars creator George Lucas from building his multi-million dollar museum on his preferred site. FOTP put this lawsuit on hold back in May, but they never fully dropped it or abandoned their argument that Lucas's favorite site, though currently a parking lot, should be exempted from construction because it could become a lakefront park in the future.

The museum has the support of major players in Chicago—including Mayor Rahm Emanuel and, predictably, pretty much every local museum director—but FOTP has had good luck with judges. Irizarry told the Tribune she doubts they'll drop the lawsuit— and FOTP's persistence could end the museum and Chicago's star-crossed love affair, a tale at least as epic and romantic as Star Wars.

However, the deadline could also be extended. Or Irizarry could simply be wrong—Tribune couldn't get anyone but her to confirm the deadline's existence.

We've reached out to Friends of the Parks for comment, and will update this post if we hear from them.