How 'Public' Is The Lucas Museum? Its Future Hinges On The Answer

By Kate Shepherd in News on Nov 9, 2015 4:31PM

What it will look like from the outside to visitors (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

There's still one big hurdle for the Lucas Museum to overcome: the federal lawsuit by Friends of the Parks.

Attorneys for both sides are set to appear in court Tuesday before U.S. District Judge John Darrah to argue the public trust doctrine, "the principle that certain lands and resources, including Lake Michigan and its shores, should be preserved and protected for public benefit," according to the Tribune.

The Lucas Museum will be open to the public, but the city's park district will be leasing public land to a private nonprofit corporation with not much public oversight.

"The cases have not been universally consistent, but usually when a project is by a private enterprise for private purpose, it has been struck down," attorney Jeff Smith, who was the lead lawyer in a 1990 federal case that stopped Loyola University from filling in 18.5 acres of Lake Michigan to enlarge its North Side lakeshore campus, told the Tribune. "When it's by a public body for public purposes, it's been upheld. The gray area is when it's mixed."

The public trust doctrine is from 1892 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state legislature's 1869 sale of submerged Lake Michigan land between Randolph Street and Roosevelt Road to the Illinois Central Railroad Co.

But in a case more similar to the Lucas Museum situation, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled against Friends of the Parks' lawsuit regarding the Soldier Field remodel in 2003. The judges ruled that Soldier Field would continue to be used by the public not just for football games but for a wide variety of events such as concerts.

It's definitely in the Lucas Museum's favor that the building will be open to the public even if it is run by a private nonprofit. But the rules still aren't clear-cut.

"If it's essentially excluding the public, then (the lawsuit) has a good shot," Smith told the Tribune. "If it's a private museum on public land with a legitimate public purpose, then it's grayer. It's not as clear-cut as it would be if it was a private skyscraper or a factory, or even a Loyola project, which is a nonprofit institution."