Better Government Association president Andy Shaw had a piece of hot news for the opening of the BGA’s forum on the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art at the Union League Club last Wednesday.
“‘George Lucas is a warm and generous guy,’” Shaw said he was told, “‘but he’s not negotiating sites here. If this site doesn’t fly, the museum will fly to another city.’”
FOTP had warned for months that it would do exactly this if there wasn’t a change in the Lucas Museum site, but the announcement had a couple of surprising wrinkles. The suit had been filed in federal court, not in Cook County. And the mantra repeatedly cited by FOTP in the preceding months—that the Lucas Museum location is a violation of the city’s lakefront protection ordinance—was glaringly absent.
There’s an element of deja vu in all this. Veteran FOTP board members were around in the early aughts, when the group filed two lawsuits to prevent the addition of a massive seating bowl to Soldier Field. Neither of those suits was successful in stopping the now-familiar spaceship from setting down atop the classical facade of the old stadium.
