George Lucas pushes low-income housing option

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Filmmaker George Lucas is pushing forward with plans to build low income housing at Marin County's picturesque Grady Ranch, a vow of his that was widely dismissed as an insincere attempt by the billionaire to thumb his nose at complaining neighbors.

The Marin Community Foundation announced Tuesday that it is working with Lucasfilm to "explore options" for building affordable housing in the location where the movie mogul wanted to build a film studio until residents in an adjacent subdivision protested.

"We don't know yet what might be able to be developed there, but the notion of being able to explore his property and see if some beautifully designed family or senior housing can be developed there is too wonderful to pass up," said Thomas Peters, president and CEO of the foundation. "One of the incredible offers that Mr. Lucas made is that he would make available the extensive technical studies that have been done on that land, including water, topography, creek access and other engineering data that would give us a head start and help us determine whether senior or affordable housing can be built there."

Lucas, whose "Star Wars" films ushered in the digital arts age, withdrew his plans last month to build a large mission-style movie-making studio on Grady Ranch, blaming the Lucas Valley Estates Homeowners Association for being NIMBY's and torpedoing it.

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