Lucas Art Museum: Not Living Happily Ever After in Chicago

When last we checked on filmmaker George Lucas and his quest to build a museum for his collection of narrative art, he was decamping from San Francisco and embracing a plan to erect his dream facility on Chicago's lakefront.

Lucas trudged through a long and, for him, ultimately disappointing process trying to persuade San Francisco's Presidio Trust to let him build his museum on a highly-sought-after site adjacent to Crissy Field. When that effort failed, Chicago officials, led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, swooped in to pitch Lucas on bringing the museum there. Lucas agreed after the city offered a piece of real estate on the Lake Michigan waterfront -- near several existing museums, Soldier Field and the massive McCormick Place convention center.

So everyone lived happily ever after.

Sure. What's actually happened is that the museum proposal has found itself in the midst of a growing controversy.

Park groups contend the project violates development controls on lakefront property, and they've filed a lawsuit that claims it's illegal to build on the reclaimed lakeshore.

The museum's recently unveiled design proposal is also drawing fire. The Chicago Tribune's Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, Blair Kamin, has written a series of pieces decrying the design as "needlessly massive." (I'd add, "And needlessly like an albino cousin of Jabba the Hutt.")

On Thursday, Lucas' latest museum-related migraine arrived. The International Business Times is reporting that before offering the lakefront site, Emanuel had gotten nearly $50,000 in campaign donations from Mellody Hobson, Lucas' wife, and from the Disney Corp., which now owns Lucasfilm and the "Star Wars" franchise.

From the IBT story:

... Windy City preservationists [have sued] to block the construction of a so-called “Star Wars” museum after Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered to let George Lucas build the $400 million project on publicly owned lakefront land. The mayor has defended the proposal to lease the prime real estate to the billionaire Lucas for just $1 a year, insisting the project is on “solid legal ground,” the Sun Times reported.

What he hasn’t mentioned is the almost $50,000 worth of campaign donations he has received from those with vested interests in the project.

One of those donors is one of the museum’s key board members, who also happens to be Lucas’ wife. Mellody Hobson, a prominent Chicago businesswoman, is a major Emanuel supporter, contributing $31,500 to his 2011 mayoral race, according to campaign records. In fact, it was Hobson who apparently came up with the idea to build the museum in Chicago. The plan came to fruition after Lucas failed to get the project approved in San Francisco earlier this year.

“Don’t worry,” Hobson reportedly told Lucas. “I’ll talk to the mayor.”

So far, neither the mayor nor museum officials have commented on the IBT's story.