George Lucas’s plans for a museum in Chicago has already hit a speed bump. Reportedly, the site for the museum used to be a garbage dump. It had apparently been pointed out up to a decade ago that large-scale work would be needed to decontaminate the soil—today, the situation cannot be much better. Lucas and his museum team therefore face the prospect of planning and budgeting to clean up the plot of land—which potentially contains carcinogens and other toxins in the soil.

When the Star Wars director George Lucas chose to locate his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago, the mayor of the city, Rahm Emanuel, emphasized how no public funds would be used in building this museum (there would be, however, some recompense in that the government will take only a symbolic rent of 1 USD per year)

The landscape designer and architect Jeanne Gang will be responsible for the landscape and pedestrian bridge connecting the museum to a nature preserve, which means costs could mount up quickly.

The architect for the museum is, of course, Ma Yansong, of MAD Architects Beijing (read more about his commission here).

Under such a situation, however flush in cash Lucas may be, he might still ask for assistance from the mayor of Chicago; after all, the existing pollution problem had nothing to do with the Lucas Museum.

Source: Chicagoist