A federal judge has erected a force field of legal power around the site of Chicago’s proposed George Lucas museum. U.S. District Judge John Darrah has ordered the city not to alter the lakeshore location of the proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art until after Feb. 26. That’s the date of the opening hearing of a lawsuit challenging the city’s right to build the new museum on the city’s Museum Campus. The order was requested by the ragtag, scrappy alliance of protesters known as Chicago’s Friends of the Parks, who probably shouldn’t have sued the Star Wars guy’s museum if they didn’t want to be referred to as scrappy and ragtag all the time.
Friends of the Parks’ request is at least partly rooted in something that happened a long time ago (2003), in a place not very far away at all. That’s when Chicago’s then-mayor, Richard M. Daley, employed a bunch of fully armed and operational bulldozers to dismantle Meigs Field Airport in the middle of the night to short-circuit a protracted legal fight. (A legal battle that, thanks to being a prequel, was both more convoluted and ultimately less fun than the Lucas Museum one.)
City lawyer William Aguiar protested that Durrah’s order was unnecessary, since the museum is still in the planning stages and fears of a midnight groundbreaking “would not be valid.” The city says that the new museum will bring new cultural and economic growth to the area, an argument eerily reminiscent of the one brought forth by the Imperial Public Relations Squadron to promote tourism at the Alderaan Big Bunch Of Rocks And Burnt Up Dead People Memorial Park back in Galactic Standard Calender Year 0 BBY.