Archinect - News

Lawsuit against Lucas Museum holds off (for now)

2016-05-03T13:00:00-04:00

[Friends of the Park] said in a news release that the stay "gives all parties the opportunity to have a more direct and productive dialogue to reach a potential solution about a museum site." [...] The move marks the latest twist in a controversy that began in 2014 when Lucas shifted the museum's location to Chicago... It gives momentum, if only momentarily, to a compromise plan for the museum that Emanuel floated last month.

Get caught up on prior news on the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, designed by MAD Architects:

Even after improved plan, Lucas Museum still mired in legal and financial problems

2016-04-20T13:00:00-04:00

this plan creates a new complication all its own: a financing scheme that involves borrowing nearly $1.2 billion and extending five taxes beyond their expiration dates: Tax dollars collected in 2066 still would be paying off a deal cut a half-century earlier, in 2016. [...] By law both proposed museum sites are submerged lake bottom and have special protections. [...] If you're a citizen, you own what's called a fractional beneficial interest in this public trust land. You can use it.

Get caught up on the rocky development history of Chicago's Lucas Museum of Narrative Art:

Lucas museum faces lawsuit from Friends of the Parks

2014-11-13T18:25:00-05:00

Erecting such a building “without authority of the General Assembly will diminish or impair the beneficial interest of plaintiffs and other Illinois citizens” [...] such a designation conflicts with the trust, which calls for preserving property as “a natural resource and as a free and open space not occupied by a giant building.” [...] by acting without the approval of state lawmakers, the city and park district would have excessive power over the property “for which they have no authority.”