Nope. None of the frivolous NIMBY lawsuits ever made it to trial, nor was the museum ever a defendant in any of them (it was the city being sued for approving it). I don't see what you gain from misrepresenting this years after the fact.
The city could've gone to trial for the one case you're referencing, and would've won given enough money and time, but by that point the museum had already started investigating other locations.
It was an impasse. Chicago wants the development money and tourism, but it also holds pretty strongly to the idea that the lakefront belongs to everyone and shouldn't be developed with private money and closed off. Yes, it was a parking lot. But it was a public parking lot.
That means sometimes these kinds of developments don't happen and you can argue either way. Lucas got a little pushy about how he wanted the museum to be developed and also turned down alternate sites. So he took his ball and left and that's okay too.
Don’t know if you’re kidding, but I strongly disagree. We need to radically expand housing in SF, to provide enough luxury high-rise apartments with waterfront views for the upcoming wave of AI IPO multi-millionaires.
I'm openly (very) curious to hear the reasoning behind that statement, not having lived in SF.
From what I've read, George Lucas funded 100% of the project, and the Presidio trust rejected it. Then he tried building the museum in Chicago, but he was sued and blocked for a couple years and eventually gave up. Finally he found a spot in LA. IIRC the project took 12 years. The same source mentioned SF hasn't started any major museum projects since 2016.
America is falling behind on public works. We used to have the largest aquarium in the world, and now we're sitting at #5 or #6.
So I am genuinely curious why you and others are opponents of public works projects? I honestly do not understand.
The presidio is huge though and has a ton of old military warehouses? Perhaps it could have taken one of the major commercial buildings already there. Is sports basement warehouse located entirely in the presidio or any of the other major commercial enterprises there really a better fit than a cool museum.
The Art Institute of Chicago is not on the lakefront. There are a handful of buildings east of Lake Shore Drive, with the most notable being the Field Museum, The Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium, McCormick Place, Lake Point Tower and Soldier Field. McCormick and Lake Point Tower are the newest of these, with the former built in 1967 (replacing an earlier structure built in 1960 but destroyed by fire) and the latter in 1968. The others were all built in the 1920s and 30s (the Art Institute building, which is in Grant Park, with roughly half of its structure east of the trench with the IC and South Shore electric railways and the rest fronting Michigan Avenue, had the older section built in the 1890s and notably was the only construction in Grant Park to not be opposed by Montgomery Ward¹). The proposed location for the museum in Chicago would have been in land owned by the Chicago Park District which is part of Grant Park and is meant to be free and open to the public and would have been a privatization of that land (it’s worth noting that the Shedd, Adler and Field properties, along with Soldier Field are all owned by the park district and not their primary tenants).
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1. The person, not the company named after him which he founded.
> Chicago would have been in land owned by the Chicago Park District which is part of Grant Park and is meant to be free and open to the public
You can call it part of Grant Park if you like, but it is a big paid parking lot. The Lucas proposal would have replaced some of the asphalt with new actual green space that was free and open to the public.
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[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Central_Railroad_Co._v._Illinois" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Central_Railroad_Co._...
Note that the museum was planned to be built on the actual land that was the subject of that Supreme Court case ;)
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Nope. None of the frivolous NIMBY lawsuits ever made it to trial, nor was the museum ever a defendant in any of them (it was the city being sued for approving it). I don't see what you gain from misrepresenting this years after the fact.
The city could've gone to trial for the one case you're referencing, and would've won given enough money and time, but by that point the museum had already started investigating other locations.
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“They would have won given enough time and money” is certainly debatable, but this ruling was ultimately what ended the museum in Chicago:
<a href="https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2014cv09096/303167/54/0.pdf?ts=1436358233" rel="nofollow">https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/illinois/il...
In federal court. And sure, if you want, you can put “lost” in scare quotes and claim I’m misrepresenting things.
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That means sometimes these kinds of developments don't happen and you can argue either way. Lucas got a little pushy about how he wanted the museum to be developed and also turned down alternate sites. So he took his ball and left and that's okay too.
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No no. San Francisco must be preserved in state as it existed in 1970 for all time, you see.
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From what I've read, George Lucas funded 100% of the project, and the Presidio trust rejected it. Then he tried building the museum in Chicago, but he was sued and blocked for a couple years and eventually gave up. Finally he found a spot in LA. IIRC the project took 12 years. The same source mentioned SF hasn't started any major museum projects since 2016.
America is falling behind on public works. We used to have the largest aquarium in the world, and now we're sitting at #5 or #6.
So I am genuinely curious why you and others are opponents of public works projects? I honestly do not understand.
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Need to leave some room for Starfleet Academy as well. Anyway I'm glad it came to Exposition park, which needed some love.
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You can call it part of Grant Park if you like, but it is a big paid parking lot. The Lucas proposal would have replaced some of the asphalt with new actual green space that was free and open to the public.