Lucas Museum Approved By Chicago City Council

chi-photos-lucas-arts-museum-collection-20140520The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is another step closer to beginning construction. The Chicago City Council voted to approve zoning for the project on October 28, after the Bears football team and the museum organization agreed on rules governing parking, Bears fan tailgating and advertising rules around Soldier Field and the museum.

Still in the way is a lawsuit by the nonprofit Friends of the Parks. According to the Chicago Tribune, the grounds for the suit are that the planned museum “violates the public trust because it will be built on the submerged waters of Lake Michigan and that a privately held museum is not in residents’ best interests.” The next court hearing is scheduled for November 10.

Council approval was the major last hurdle in respect to city requirements.

Construction on the museum is slated to begin no sooner than March 1 with an opening date as early as 2019, according to The Associated Press. See more museum design illustrations here.

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Interior design of proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

21 thoughts on “Lucas Museum Approved By Chicago City Council

  1. Some locals have pointed out that it’s on prime lakefront property, with a gorgeous view… and no windows to speak of.

  2. Yeah. “Prime lakefront property” that was supposed to be kept “forever open, free and clear” for use by the public. Very few locals NOT on the city council are happy with this decision–that court case mentioned in the OP isn’t just a minor hurdle.

  3. “built on … submerged waters”? What does that even mean? How can water be submerged, and how can they build on water?

  4. Morris Keesan, if memory serves (and it may not), that whole area is landfill, reclaimed from Lake Michigan a century ago. I think that’s what it’s talking about.

    And Mary Francis is quite right; nothing is supposed to be built on that land. It’s all supposed to be park. It’s caused quite a firestorm in local politics.

  5. Morris Keesan: “submerged waters” means that that’s landfill–it was originally part of Lake Michigan, and the city filled it in over the years so now it’s part of the shoreline. If it had been originally part of the shoreline, getting permission to build a private sector building on it would have been much more difficult, I believe; I think they are taking advantage of a technicality here. I also have a suspicion that it will cause problems for anyone attempting to build a really big building on that property, but we’ll see. If the Lucas Museum people aren’t being honest about the design plans (or are so stupid that they don’t realize that they need to take the nature of the ground into account), then the whole proposal is a disaster in the making.

  6. Cassy B: Yup, that’s right. I don’t think that that particular chunk of lakeshore was created quite that long ago–most of the early stuff was further north, and was partly aimed at protecting against erosion, too–but that’s what it is: land that was created by filling in the lake, to be preserved for public use.

  7. It’s really hard for citizens to be heard with the political types like a development, especially where there are really deep pockets involved.
    More power to them – I hope they can tie it up in legal knots for years.

    Really, this thing is supposed to sit on the lakefront with NO WINDOWS, and in the middle of everyone else’s view.
    That seriously, seriously sucks.

    It Lucas wants a self-contained museum world, he can put it anywhere.
    He doesn’t have to steal the commons.

  8. Lauowolf: Given that there is at least one other public site that the city could have offered the Lucas Museum (the Michael Reese Hospital campus, which was purchased for the failed Chicago Olympic bid and which is currently sitting basically fenced-off and empty), this use of the lakefront is particularly infuriating.

  9. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than in Chicago. On the other hand, it will be nice to have it nearby for the next Chicago Worldcon in 2022.

  10. If Lucas wants a self-contained museum world, he can put it anywhere.
    He doesn’t have to steal the commons

    San Francisco turned him down when he wanted to build in the Presidio. It would have been a much more conventional-looking building, but still out of scale with the area, and it’s a location more valuable to the city as park/open space.

  11. P J Evans: San Francisco turned him down when he wanted to build in the Presidio.

    I’d heard that. Good for San Francisco–and I could pretty much say exactly the same things about the Chicago site.

  12. The parkland along the lake began as landfill of all the rubble from the Great Chicago Fire. Basically the entirety of the parkland green space extending south along the lakeshore from the Loop is all landfill and it was indeed supposed to be “forever open, free, and clear” for the public.

    There have been infringements that should never have been allowed on it before, most notably the McCormick Place convention center, which squats like a black Imperial Destroyer just south of the proposed site of this museum, and a private apartment building near Navy Pier dating to the ’60s which was, I think, favored by the mayor.

    There is also a museum campus in the park, and the Bears football stadium, so it’s not like there is no precedent for a museum there.

    I note with some cynicism that Lucas donated $25 million for a new arts center to the school Mayor Emmanuel’s children attend, and that Chicago brides were furious when it turned out that an exception was made for Lucas on the absolute, no exceptions, utter ban on privately renting a public park including its bathrooms and being able to keep the public out for one’s wedding reception.

    There is also a lot of residual anger at former Mayor Daley for demolishing the architecturally significant Michael Reese hospital site with unseemly haste and little forewarning when he was trying to hustle it as the site for the Olympic Village in his failed bid for the Olympics.

    That site, still a bare fenced-off gravel pit, is mere blocks away from the proposed museum site, just south of the McCormick Place complex, with excellent transportation and not on public parkland. Heck, it even has lake views since it’s just on the other side of the highway from the park and lakefront.

  13. Peace Is My Middle Name: The parkland along the lake began as landfill of all the rubble from the Great Chicago Fire.

    Yeah, that’s as I understood it–the Fire burned mostly north and east, so the landfill started up north and didn’t get to the south side until later. Around the 1930s? I think?

    a private apartment building near Navy Pier dating to the ’60s which was, I think, favored by the mayor.

    Are you talking about Lake Point Tower? I’d never heard it was especially strongly favored by Daley Senior, but not much got built in Chicago in those days that wasn’t supported by the mayor’s office, so it makes sense.

    There is also a museum campus in the park, and the Bears football stadium, so it’s not like there is no precedent for a museum there.

    Except that the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium, the Field Museum–and the Museum of Science and Industry, further south–are all public institutions, and the Chicago Park District still owns and oversees the land; Soldier Field is a municipal stadium, owned by the Park District (the Bears are renters, and never mind my opinion of that situation–or the repulsive political botch that “remodelling” Soldier Field turned into). I’m pretty sure the situation is going to be the opposite with the Lucas Museum–that is, the museum will own the land and lease space (mostly parking space) to the Park District. And if there is a precedent here, there is also the precedent set by the struggle to keep the Chicago Children’s Museum out of Grant Park–Mayor Daley the Younger lost that one, thank goodness.

    Which is a long way around to the fact that I agree with you, I suppose. This is just one more in a long history of attempts to chisel away at Chicago’s lakefront . . . and what happened with (and is happening to) the Michael Reese property is appalling.

  14. @Mary Frances:

    I believe the entirety of the lakeshore parkland south of Grant Park, including the peninsula with the planetarium, Northerly Island and basically extending all the way down to 39th Street, was landfill created for the Century of Progress Exhibition in 1933. I think there was supposed to be a Southerly Island too but it never got made.

    For a responsible opposing viewpoint, one of my Chicago friends has pointed out to me that the land Lucas wants to build a museum on *isn’t* presently “parkland”, it’s part of a vast sea of paved-over concrete and asphalt parking lot for the Bears stadium to the north and possibly also McCormick Place to the south.

    As far as my friend is concerned, the Lucas museum would be a major aesthetic improvement over the situation as it is now.

  15. Peace Is My Middle Name: For a responsible opposing viewpoint, one of my Chicago friends has pointed out to me that the land Lucas wants to build a museum on *isn’t* presently “parkland”, it’s part of a vast sea of paved-over concrete and asphalt parking lot for the Bears stadium to the north and possibly also McCormick Place to the south.

    Your friend has a point, I admit. I think it’s the Bears parking lot, since they held up the deal to insist that their fans needed enough space to tailgate. Given that I don’t believe that the Bears continued presence on the lakefront is really all that vital to the city, the fact that the land in question was under- and badly-utilized doesn’t really change my opinion of putting a honking great flying saucer down on it. The Toilet Bowl by the Lake, aka the new Soldier Field, is bad enough, but at least the stadium itself has history behind it. And I’m still worried about digging down into landfill as deeply as the Lucas Museum’s original plans (only vaguely modified) called for–it just does not seem like an ecologically sound idea, to me, and no one has presented any real evidence on that, one way or another.

    I believe the entirety of the lakeshore parkland south of Grant Park, including the peninsula with the planetarium, Northerly Island and basically extending all the way down to 39th Street, was landfill created for the Century of Progress Exhibition in 1933.

    Thought so. Thanks for the confirmation.

  16. Fight on! There have been some truly dreadful things given planning permission in London of late, including things taking up what used up be common green space, and frankly any rule-avoiding of typical planning permission laws in any city is starting to get my back up.

  17. Wherever it ends up, I’m waiting for the hordes that will descend on it and be pissed that it’s not all Star-Wars-y.
    Granted–it’s hard to get things past the gatekeepers of the Presidio; but I don’t think it was ever Lucas’ intention to build that thing in SF. I think he (and his wife, especially) always intended for Chicago. The Presidio plan was just to get the big-shots in Chicago to jump.
    If you looked at the plans they drew up, it was obvious they had no interest in really settling here. In one of the most scenic areas of the country, their building looked like a giant Day’s Inn.
    http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/place/article/Lessons-from-the-fight-over-the-star-crossed-6244327.php

  18. @Meredith:

    At least ex-Mayor Daley’s Chicago Olympic bid failed. He actually wanted to build a stadium complex on top of Washington Park, a gorgeous Frederick Law Olmstead designed park which is pretty much the only green space of any size in the entire impoverished largely minority south side of the city, constantly used during the nonfrozen months for African-American festivals, picnics, family gatherings, etc.

    The city swore the stadium complex would only be temporary. But it’s said that before (see Meigs Field).

  19. Peace Is My Middle Name: At least ex-Mayor Daley’s Chicago Olympic bid failed. He actually wanted to build a stadium complex on top of Washington Park,

    Yeah. And now we’ve got the Obama Presidential Library to worry about in that area. To be fair, placing the library on the south side makes sense, and both the University of Chicago and the city are at least paying lip service to preserving the green space (and the Jackson Park location would have been worse), but it’s still worrying. And of course the new building won’t be anything like the size of what the Olympics would have required . . . well. At least it’s called attention (again) to the neglect Washington Park has suffered over the years . . . small bright spot, I suppose.

  20. Pingback: Lucas Museum Remains Stalled | File 770

  21. I have a solution shamelessly ripped off from The New AToms’ Bombshell by Robert Browne (1980) (which appears to have been a rewrite of Last Man Out by Marvin Karlins, 1969). Secretly build the museum offshore, underwater, and raise it up to the surface after completion.

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