Reboot Illinois
While Chicago is all atwitter over landing the George Lucas Museum, there’s a VERY large problem lurking out there that threatens the city’s very existence.
Editor’s note:
This isn’t the first time Chicago Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis has found inspiration in Chicago’s pursuit of Star Wars creator George Lucas’ museum. In a previous cartoon, he drew up a cast of Illinois characters who would fit right in on Tatooine. See it here.
While much of Chicago rejoiced at the news that Lucas had selected a vacant portion of the city’s lakefront near Soldier Field as the location for his Museum of Narrative Art, the Chicago Tribune didn’t join the celebration. In an editorial and column by John Kass on June 26, the newspaper criticized placing the museum on the lakefront, which is said should be reserved for green space.
Here’s a summary of those critiques.
Filmmaker George Lucas also is planning to spend a lot of money in Illinois, with a $1 billion narrative art museum in the works for Chicago’s museum campus. The project was praised by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as bringing jobs and tourism to Chicago. The city’s bid beat out Los Angeles and Lucas’ hometown San Francisco.
Today, though, both the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board and Tribune columnist John Kass are criticizing the plan to build on the city’s lakefront, which the editorial board says violates the Lakefront Plan of Chicago, which prohibits further private development east of Lake Shore Drive. Earlier plans to develop on the lakefront have failed to come to fruition.
The Tribune editorial says: Among other steps, the Lucas proposal will go before the Chicago Plan Commission, established in 1909 to fulfill Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago. The commission was created to free the city from ineptitude and corruption in deciding which projects get developed where. Among its most crucial jobs: upholding the Lakefront Plan of Chicago, titled to evoke Burnham’s plan.
The board mentions two other times in recent history where proposals to build along Lake Michigan were questioned when Chicagoans became frustrated at what they saw as mayoral overreach: a 2001 plan to build extra seating at Soldier Field and in 2008 with the suggestion to relocate the Chicago Children’s Museum to Grant Park.
The editorial continues:
We do welcome Mr. Lucas’ choice of Chicago for his museum, holding his collection, and built with his money.
But remember: The goal of lakefront protection is to make each generation of civic and government leaders resist the temptation to build on lands and vistas that cannot be replaced. We can debate lakefront protection in Chicago only because those who came before us left us a lakefront to protect.
Columnist Kass is concerned both with the idea of the museum on the lakefront and a museum coming from the “Star Wars” creator in general, arguing that dinosaurs and fish and stars are potentially more valuable museum topics than “Jabba the Hut and Norman Rockwell.”
Says Kass:
“No one should have a problem with Lucas or his wife, Mellody Hobson, wanting a museum. They can spend their money as they see fit. And I have no problem with Rahm bending over backward to make them happy.
But not on the lakefront, which is supposed to be “forever open, clear and free.”
Yes, there are other museums on the lakefront, but those museums are about real things.
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Scott Stantis is the editorial cartoonist of the Chicago Tribune. His work is syndicated in more than 125 newspapers and other publications. Arriving in Chicago as the Rod Blagojevich scandal developed, Stantis has drawn extensively about corruption and other issues related to Illinois state government and Chicago and Cook County government. A collection of his best Illinois cartoons from 2013 is here. We’ve also gathered his cartoons on the 2014 election in this collection.