Star Warscreator George Lucas has a new hope for his planned art museum and it no longer involves the Windy City.
Officials at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Artannounced Fridaythey are abandoning plans tobuild the project in Chicago, ending months of contentious debate about the $700 million venture.
The museum blamed extensive delays due to Friends of the Parks, a local activist group that sued to block the project from setting up near Chicagos lakefront.
Credit: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
No one benefits from continuing their seemingly unending litigation to protect a parking lot, Lucas said in a statement.
The actions initiated by Friends of the Parks and their recent attempts to extract concessions from the city have effectively overridden approvals received from numerous democratically elected bodies of government.
With Chicago out of the picture, museum officials are now looking to build in San Francisco (the projectsoriginal intended home) or Los Angeles.
According to its website, the Lucas Museum is intended to celebrate the power of visual storytelling in a setting focused on narrative painting, illustration, photography, film, animation and digital art.
