Guess billionaires throwing fits and threatening to take their franchises elsewhere only works for stadiums: After more than a year of bitter back-and-forth, plans to build the $300 million George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on Chicago’s lakefront have officially been abandoned. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel said as much in a scolding statement released earlier today, where he called the museum ”an incredible legacy investment” and tsk-tsked Friends of the Parks—which filed a lawsuit against the proposed museum in November 2014 and kept the fight going until this May—for “[negotiating] with themselves while Lucas negotiated with cities on the West Coast.”
Lucas is pretty bitter about the whole thing too, since apparently he only likes ragtag coalitions bringing down mighty empires against incredible odds when he can sell some action figures afterwards. “No one benefits from continuing their seemingly unending litigation to protect a parking lot,” Lucas says in a press release. “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.” Yeah, but no one pays attention to the parliamentary scenes, George. You should know that by now.
The George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will now likely be built in California, close to Lucasfilm’s home base in Marin County. Friends of the Parks has yet to comment.
[via DNAinfo, Chicago Tribune]