Editorial: Lucas Museum passes test of first principles

Follow @csteditorials

The Friends of the Parks once may have stood on high principle in their fight to keep the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art from being built on Chicago’s lakefront, but no longer.

The Friends have abandoned their loftiest argument, that a 1973 ordinance and the spirit of a “free and open” lakefront prohibit further private development east of Lake Shore Drive. Now they’re just trying to cut a deal on the particulars of the museum, like everybody else.

But in giving up the high ground of pure principle, the Friends have lost much of their authority in this debate. Why should anybody listen to them? They are a respected and valued group, undoubtedly, but elected by nobody. If it is not a violation of fundamental civic values to grant the Lucas Museum a lakefront location, as the Friends appear to have conceded, then they should step aside. They should drop their law suit and leave it to those who actually were elected by somebody — the mayor and the City Council — to cut the best deal for our city.

Maybe then this negotiation can move into the real world.

As Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times reported Monday, Friends of the Parks Executive Director Juanita Irizarry wrote up a negotiating memo last week outlining a list of demands in exchange for the group’s support for a lakefront location for the Lucas Museum. The memo asks for at least a couple of things that will never happen.

Most problematic, the memo calls for locating the museum on a lakefront site now occupied by a convention center, McCormick Place East. We once favored that location, too, but it stands little chance of gaining approval in Springfield. It would require $1.2 billion in borrowing and the extension of five tourism taxes.

The Friends of the Parks also are demanding that five percent of all revenues from the Lucas Museum be funneled to neighborhood parks. We’re pretty sure that would be a deal-killer for filmmaker George Lucas, who has committed to spending $743 million to this project.

A better plan, which Irizarry says the Friends of the Parks board has “not weighed in on,” would be to build the museum on the site of a parking lot south of Soldier Field. This is the location Emanuel and Lucas originally proposed. It would cost much less, require no state approval, and improve business for the entire lakefront Museum Campus.

On Tuesday, Irizarry told us, a “representative of the city” gave the Friends of the Parks a deadline — that very day — to accept the parking lot location. If not, she says she was warned, Lucas was moving on to another town.

The mayor’s office later insisted there is no deadline.

But nobody doubts that time grows short.

Follow the Editorial Board on Twitter: Follow @csteditorials

Tweets by @CSTeditorials