George Lucas $1B museum dragged into scandal over using dark arts to bypass rules: suit
A contractor has claimed George Lucas’ hotly anticipated $1 billion museum used its private status to skirt California’s public works rules while enjoying a sweetheart deal to build on state-owned land for just $30 a year.Electrical contractor J.E.Snyder Electric filed a $1.9 million lawsuit against the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, alleging it was not paid for work on the sprawling Exposition Park project, according to the LA Times.At the center of the dispute is the museum’s unusual deal for the publicly owned land beneath it — a 99-year lease that costs just $30 a year.The contractor claims that arrangement effectively makes the museum a public works project and should have subjected its construction to additional state requirements.The lawsuit alleges the museum, prime contractor Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co.
and first-tier subcontractor Siemens Industry Inc.“actively promoted, contracted, and labeled the construction as a ‘private, non-profit development’ to bypass the rigorous administrative, registration, and bonding mandates of the California Public Contract Code, Civil Code, and Labor Code.”The museum, co-founded and privately financed by the “Star Wars” legend and his wife Mellody Hobson, has vehemently rejected the allegation that the project should be considered public work.“The Lucas Museum is one of the largest private cultural gifts in American history: more than $1 billion, every penny of it private.
No public funds.No public financing.
No public debt,” museum attorney Orin Snyder told The Times.“The claim that this is a ‘public work’ is a fiction, manufactured for leverage in a routine payment dispute by a subcontractor who has no direct contract with the Museum.”The museum argues the rent is only one part of a broader agreement that benefits the state and the public.It paid the state $490,000 annually while some surface parking was unavailable during construction and $2.1 million a year when it was complete...