Still Holding Lucas Museum Hostage, Park Pals Have Ransom Demand List

Rendering of the Lucas Museum for Narrative Art replacing the McCormick Place Lakeside Center

After nearly suing the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art out of existence, Crain’s Chicago Business reports that gadfly group Friends of the Parks has a list of what it wants from the city in exchange for dropping the lawsuit.

Crain’s describes the enumeration as a “wish list,” as if it was Ralphie asking Santa for an official a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle.  But considering that the unelected, self-appointed protectors of Chicago’s lakefront are holding the museum project hostage, the correct description is “ransom.”

Among the group’s reported demands:

• No more lakefront development in Chicago for the next century
• Finish DuSable Park, a project stalled by the failure of the Chicago Spire project, but currently the responsibility of friends-of-the-blog Related Midwest, which now owns the Spire property
• 5% of museum revenues put into a fund for parks in “disinvested” neighborhoods
• Transform FotP’s cherished Soldier Field parking lot into a permanent non-parking, yes-tailgating green space

Meeting those conditions, and a couple of others, would allow the city and the museum to move forward with Plan B, which is to demolish the McCormick Place Lakeside Center and replace it with the museum, costing taxpayers an estimated $1.2 billion dollars.  The original plan would not have cost the taxpayers anything.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times, which has been consistently out front on this story, reports that patience is growing thin in the Lucas camp. At the same time, both Los Angeles and San Francisco are upping their antes to woo the museum to the west coast.

The McCormick Place Lakeside Center

from Chicago Architecture http://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2016/06/20/still-holding-lucas-museum-hostage-park-pals-have-ransom-demand-list/