The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will not be built on the banks of Lake Michigan in Chicago as planned - instead, the project will be moved to California due to obstacles raised by an environmental organisation, film director George Lucas says.
The creator of the Star Wars saga, who had been authorised by the Chicago Park District to build his four-storey museum on municipal land, said in a statement that the work was made impossible by a lawsuit filed in 2014 by the environmentalist group Friends of the Parks.
"No one benefits from continuing their seemingly unending litigation to protect a parking lot," Lucas said about the lawsuit blocking construction on Museum Campus, a park next to Soldiers Field and the McCormick Place convention centre.
According to Lucas, the environmentalists' legal actions and his subsequent attempts to obtain concessions from the city effectively put an end to the project.
Friends of the Parks maintained, with the support of the judge assigned to the case, that park lands cannot be given to private organisations by the municipality.
The museum, designed by Chinese architect Ma Yansong, was to have three theatres, a library and an educational centre, plus costumes of Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Yoda and Han Solo.
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