A federal judge has told a nonprofit group trying to stop Star Wars’ filmmaker George Lucas from building a $400-million museum in Chicago to respond to the city’s request to dismiss its lawsuit.
The Chicago Tribune reports (http://trib.in/1L8rWFN ) that on Tuesday, the U.S. District Judge John Darrah set the next hearing for February.
Friends of the Parks argues the museum will violate the public trust because it’ll be built on reclaimed land that was once Lake Michigan. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is set to be built near Soldier Field. The plan already was revised to shrink the building and allow more green space on the lakefront site. The museum could open as soon as 2019.
Lucas’ choice of Chicago as the site was considered a coup for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Initially Lucas wanted to build the museum in San Francisco’s Presidio, but the federal agency in charge of preserving the park, the Presidio Trust, rejected the museum proposal in early 2014.
Lucas is a longtime Marin County resident and he has also run into resistance for projects he’s proposed on his Lucas Valley property.
