Video: George Lucas' museum in Chicago, what you need to know 
 
 “Star Wars” creator George Lucas has selected Chicago over Los Angeles and San Francisco as the future home of his collection of art and movie memorabilia, according to a spokeswoman for the museum. 
 
 The museum's board Wednesday is expected to vote on a name change — from the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art — and destination. 
 
 Pending approval by the Chicago Plan Commission, Lucas' institution would be built on what are now parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place and would open in 2018. Architectural renderings will be presented to city officials in early fall, according to a statement from the museum. 
 
 The decision to select Chicago reflects both a bungling of the billionaire's legacy project by the board of a national park in San Francisco as well as an aggressive lobbying effort by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. 
 
 “I am humbled to be joining such an extraordinary museum community and to be creating the museum in a city that has a long tradition of embracing the arts and architecture,” Lucas said in a statement. He added, “Choosing Chicago is the right decision for the museum, but a difficult decision for me personally because of my strong personal and professional roots in the Bay Area.” 
 
 Lucas declined an interview request through a spokeswoman. 
 
 The 70-year-old filmmaker is a native of Modesto, Calif., but he built his career in San Francisco. He never made a movie in Hollywood. He recently married a Chicagoan, Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson, and lives here part time. 
 
 The museum will house a collection that includes valuable Norman Rockwell paintings, examples of the special effects he pioneered at Industrial Light & Magic, and memorabilia such as the Darth Vader costume. 
 
 The works are wrapped around the theme of storytelling. Many pieces, such as Lucas' collection of magazine illustrations, predate the arrival of moving pictures, television and radio, said Laurie Norton Moffatt, chief executive officer of the Norman Rockwell Museum, who is advising Lucas. 
 
 “It's still an emerging and growing collection,” she said. She noted that Lucas “has an extraordinary collection of movie posters. I think he has the largest collection in the world.” 
 
 According to a source, two factors weighed in Chicago's favor. 
 
 One was that the city draws far more tourists than San Francisco. Chicago set a record in 2012 with 46.37 million visitors while the city of San Francisco attracted 16.51 million visitors that year, according to the San Francisco Travel Association. 
 
 In addition, the site Emanuel offered is near the Museum Campus, home to the Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum and Adler Planetarium. Lucas hopes to collaborate with his prospective neighbors, the source said. 
 
 “I just got off the phone with George Lucas and Mellody Hobson to thank them for choosing Chicago, the most American of American cities,” Emanuel said at a news conference Tuesday. “With this new museum, the Lucas museum, we have a tremendous opportunity in the city of Chicago, as they partner with the schools throughout the city of Chicago and make a tremendous investment in the city.” 
 
 Still, the museum has drawn opposition from open-space advocates, such as Friends of the Parks. 
 
 Among the 14 “basic policies” of the Lakefront Plan of Chicago, adopted by the city council in 1973, is that “in no instance will further private development be permitted east of Lake Shore Drive.” And the Lakefront Protection Ordinance says that the plan commission's decisions “shall be made in conformity with” those policies. 
 
 “We will do what it takes and that very well may be a lawsuit,” Friends of the Parks President Cassandra Francis said. “We are in coalition-building mode, but we are very optimistic, based on discussions, that we will have a broad group of organizations joining us” in opposing the lakefront location for the museum. 
 
 Under Emanuel's plan, the two Chicago Park District-owned parking lots would be leased to the museum for $1, which is similar to arrangements other large cultural institutions have with the Park District. 
 
 But unlike other museums, the Lucas museum would not receive taxpayer subsidies to cover a portion of its operations, a top mayoral aide has said. 
 
 The parking lots would be moved underground at Lucas' expense, the city has said. 
 
 What that means for Chicago Bears tailgaters remains unclear. 
 
 While Emanuel did not take questions Tuesday, he did respond to a shouted question about tailgating: “We've worked that issue out, and it will be continued.” 
 
 The theory is that the parking lots are an ideal location because the museum would draw conventioneers from neighboring McCormick Place. In addition, the 17-acre plot of land is large enough to house the museum while leaving about 12 acres for new green space. 
 
 The city got a shot at the museum because Lucas was unable to nail down an agreement for his first choice: a San Francisco bayside location on Crissy Field, part of a former Army base that was turned into an urban national park known as the Presidio. In a statement Tuesday, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said the Presidio's board “unwisely rejected” Lucas' preferred site and “forced” him to consider Chicago. 
 
 “These opportunities to attract hundreds of millions of dollars in private and philanthropic investment to create new public amenities for arts and education, as Mr. Lucas had proposed, come along rarely,” Lee said. “I am disappointed that San Francisco will not benefit from this renowned art collection and significant private investment by Mr. Lucas that would have been enjoyed by our families and children for generations to come.” 
 
 In addition to covering construction costs, Lucas has said the museum would accumulate a $400 million endowment over time. 
 
 Since marrying, Lucas and Hobson have given generously to Chicago institutions, committing $25 million each to two local, education-focused charities: the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and After School Matters. 
 
 Lucas is worth an estimated $5.1 billion, putting him at No. 296 on Forbes' list of the world's billionaires. If he lived here full time, he would be Chicago's second-wealthiest resident. 
 
 Tribune reporters Bill Ruthhart, Blair Kamin and Mitch Smith contributed. 
 
 mmharris@tribune.com 
 
 Twitter @chiconfidential ||||| Bravo! Chicago is a lock for George Lucas’ museum. 
 
 Mayor Rahm Emanuel has won a fierce competition with Los Angeles and San Francisco to house a first-of its-kind interactive museum housing movie mogul George “Star Wars” Lucas’ formidable collection of artwork and movie memorabilia! 
 
 Shortly after Sneed’s scoop that Chicago had won the bidding war, Lucas issued a statement from San Francisco: “Building in Chicago is the right decision for the museum, but the Bay Area will always be my home. I grew up here, made all my films here and raised my family in the Bay Area.” 
 
 Chicago’s lakefront museum campus will house the new $1 billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on a 17-acre site located on parking lots between Soldier Field and McCormick Place. It will open in 2018. 
 
 “George Lucas has revolutionized the art of storytelling over the last four decades and we are honored to be the recipient of this incredible legacy investment that will allow everyone to learn about and experience narrative arts,” Emanuel said in a statement. 
 
 “Like Marshall Field, John G. Shedd and Max Adler before him, George’s philanthropy will inspire and educate for generations. No other museum like this exists in the world, making it a tremendous educational, cultural and job creation asset for all Chicagoans, as well as an unparalleled draw for international tourists,” added the mayor. 
 
 The Lucas museum board also credited Chicago for providing a larger location; its easy accessibility to public transportation; and the fact it is centrally located in a city renowned for its love of art and architecture. 
 
 Lucas — who is married to Chicago businesswoman/civic leader Mellody Hobson — originally wanted to build the 95,000-square-foot museum in his hometown of San Francisco, on Crissy Field in the national park known as the Presidio. 
 
 But when site proposals on the field were rejected, Emanuel moved fast in February and quickly became a front-runner to snag the project. 
 
 “I am humbled to be joining such an extraordinary museum community and to be creating the Museum in a city that has a long tradition of embracing the arts and architecture,” Lucas said in a statement on the museum’s website. 
 
 Shortly after a phone call thanking Lucas and Hobson for choosing Chicago, Emanuel told reporters outside his City Hall office Monday evening that the museum will create “one of the most tremendous, vibrant and green museum campuses of any major American city that will partner education with our neighborhood schools and create jobs throughout the city of Chicago.” 
 
 It will bring “hundreds of jobs and economic opportunity,” Emanuel said. 
 
 He added: “This is a milestone for the city, but it is just one milestone on a journey as we build this new museum.” 
 
 Ironically, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who attended a Step IT Up America conference with Emanuel in Chicago recently, wrote a column last Saturday for SFGate.com stating that he felt confident his city could beat the Lucas site proposed for Chicago. 
 
 Little did he know that the city that dawdled would get dismissed. 
 
 ◆ The stats: The museum is completely self-funded; will be built, funded and endowed by Lucas; and has been described as a “history of storytelling” project “dedicated to the power of the visual image” as well as the world’s largest interactive museum. 
 
 Lucas said he wanted his museum to be close to the water, enveloped by nature and centrally located. He talked about enhancing the green space around it by taking much of the museum parking underground. 
 
 Welcome to your second home, George. 
 
 Mellody has given us the gift of you . . . and what a gift you are giving us. 
 
 MAP: Proposed Location: ||||| President Barack Obama has selected the University of Chicago to host his library and museum, sources have told the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Despite a flurry of reports Thursday that Chicago had won the library, there was no official confirmation by the Obama administration, City Hall or the Obama Foundation, which is leading the site selection process. 
 
 Martin Nesbitt, the foundation's president and a close friend of the president's, declined to comment Thursday night. 
 
 Last Friday, Obama called Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office to thank the mayor and the two Democratic leaders of the Illinois legislature, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, for fast-tracking state legislation that would authorize the use of parkland for a presidential library, said a source familiar with the conversation who was not authorized to speak publicly about it. 
 
 Obama did not go further to indicate the library would be located in Chicago, the source said. 
 
 Sources said it remained unclear whether a decision had been made on which South Side park to build the library — Washington Park or Jackson Park. 
 
 According to one source, the official announcement could come in the next few weeks. 
 
 The president and the Barack Obama Foundation also have considered a plan, according to sources, to place the president's offices and the foundation in New York. It would be an arrangement similar to former President Bill Clinton, who built his library, museum and institute in Little Rock but operates his foundation, from which global projects are launched, in Harlem. 
 
 Sources said Obama's offices could be built in West Harlem, on land offered by Columbia University, the U. of C.'s chief competitor for the library. However, it was unclear whether the president had made a final decision. That announcement is expected to come later. 
 
 Officials in Hawaii already have been told that they would not get the library instead would instead be allowed to build a project that represents the state's ties with the president, sources said. Hawaii has proposed a presidential center that includes a museum-type visitors center, as well as education and research facilities. The details of the foundation-sanctioned project were still being worked out. 
 
 The University of Illinois at Chicago is the only one of the four finalists that could walk away empty-handed. 
 
 The reports about the library decision came on a night the Emanuel administration was already receiving national publicity as Chicago hosts the NFL draft downtown. 
 
 No surprise to Chicagoans, presidential library will be built near the University of Chicago campus It comes as no surprise to Chicagoans that the presidential library will be built near the University of Chicago campus as both President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, worked at University of Chicago prior to living in Washington, D.C. (WGN TV) It comes as no surprise to Chicagoans that the presidential library will be built near the University of Chicago campus as both President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, worked at University of Chicago prior to living in Washington, D.C. (WGN TV) See more videos 
 
 Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., who was at a meeting with Obama at the White House on Thursday to discuss a pending trade deal, said he hadn't been told "definitively" that Chicago would be chosen for the library site. 
 
 But "I had people tell me that I'll be happy with the decision," Quigley said, adding that the message has been communicated to him "weekly for the last month." 
 
 "I'm going to be cautiously optimistic," he said. "After we got the NFL draft, everything else is anticlimactic." 
 
 The selection caps a yearlong competition that began with 13 bids that eventually were narrowed down to four finalists. The U. of C., where Obama taught constitutional law for a dozen years and first lady Michelle Obama formerly worked as a hospital administrator, had long been considered the front-runner. The South Side also is where Obama launched his political career as a state senator in 1996 and where the first lady was born. 
 
 Obama's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who serves on the Barack Obama Foundation board, and her husband, Konrad Ng, led the site selection process, working closely with the president and first lady to figure out what would go where, sources said. Soetoro-Ng and her husband live in Honolulu. 
 
 The plan to award the project to the U. of C. has been in place since late March, but the announcement was delayed after Emanuel failed to win his re-election bid in February and ended up in a runoff. The White House decided to wait until after the April 7 runoff election to announce the plan, sources said. 
 
 The reason for delaying an announcement until after the Chicago runoff, sources said, was that the president wanted to know who would be in the mayor's seat as the estimated $500 million project is carried out over the next several years. 
 
 Earlier this month, Obama was quoted in a Chicago Tribune editorial saying he hoped his library ended up in Chicago but acknowleding that there were "some entanglements." 
 
 In recent months, Emanuel has taken a public leadership role in securing the library for Chicago. After the foundation made its concerns known in December that the U. of C. was offering to build the library on public land that it did not own, Emanuel stepped in and shepherded a controversial plan to transfer parkland to the city's control. 
 
 Under the plan submitted by the U. of C., the library and museum would be placed either on 20 acres in Jackson Park or 21 acres in Washington Park for $1. The university also has offered 6 acres that it owns in the Washington Park neighborhood and another 5 acres owned by the city and the Chicago Transit Authority. 
 
 State lawmakers attempted to head off further legal wrangling over whether the library could be built on public land last week, when legislation aimed at providing legal protections for the library was quickly passed. 
 
 Friends of the Parks, which already has filed a federal lawsuit challenging plans for a proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on parkland, has been the chief opposition to building the Obama library on parkland. 
 
 The bill went to Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, whose office wouldn't say whether he would sign it. Rauner spokesman Lance Trover repeated Thursday that the administration had "no comment" on the legislation. 
 
 Michael A. Memoli of the Tribune Washington Bureau contributed.
– Chicago will soon be home George Lucas' collection of art, film memorabilia, animation, and more—though the city wasn't necessarily Lucas' first choice for his private museum. The filmmaker proposed a $700 million plan earlier this year to build the museum in San Francisco, but his chosen bayside location was rejected, the New York Times reports. The city's Presidio Trust suggested he put the museum near his former film studio. Instead, he opted for Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reports. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel had battled to win the museum for the city, where Lucas lives part time; his wife is from Chicago. "I am humbled to be joining such an extraordinary museum community and to be creating the museum in a city that has a long tradition of embracing the arts and architecture,” Lucas says. “Choosing Chicago is the right decision for the museum, but a difficult decision for me personally because of my strong personal and professional roots in the Bay Area." The museum, set to open in 2018, will display items as varied as Norman Rockwell paintings, a Darth Vader suit, movie posters, and special-effects technology, the Tribune notes. The Chicago Sun-Times calls it a $1 billion project, noting that it will be built on the city's lakefront. (It's not the first time Lucas has had to retool a massive building project.)