A contractor has accused George Lucas’ $1 billion museum of exploiting its private status to dodge California public works rules while paying just $30 a year for state-owned land.
Electrical contractor J.E. Snyder Electric filed a $1.9 million lawsuit against the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, claiming it was never paid for work on the sprawling Exposition Park project. The dispute centers on the museum’s unusual 99-year lease for publicly owned land — a rate the contractor argues effectively transforms the project into public works under state law.
“We contend this rent concession makes the project a public works,” attorney Christopher Hook told the LA Times. “Ultimately this will be a question of law for the Court to decide.”
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.”
J.E. Snyder Electric also claims the museum failed to obtain a payment bond required for California public works projects, which protects contractors seeking unpaid money, and never registered with the state Department of Industrial Relations.
The financial strain has hit the contractor directly. “We’ve taken out loans to pay interest to finance our debt because we’re not being compensated from them,” co-founder John Snyder told the paper.
The museum, co-founded and privately financed by the “Star Wars” creator and his wife Mellody Hobson, has forcefully rejected the public works characterization. “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 said.
“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 points to broader benefits it provided the state beyond the symbolic rent. It paid $490,000 annually while some surface parking was unavailable during construction and $2.1 million yearly when parking was completely unavailable. The campus added more than 1,375 new parking spaces, upgraded an adjacent soccer field, renovated facilities at nearby Jesse Brewer Park, and will include 11 acres of privately maintained public park space.
The lawsuit is one of four recently brought by contractors alleging unpaid money from the museum, Hathaway Dinwiddie or Siemens. Hathaway Dinwiddie separately sued the Lucas Museum for alleged breach of contract involving more than $35,000. Three other contractor lawsuits seek between $272,000 and $439,000.
The legal battles surround a project long marked by delays. Construction broke ground eight years ago, and the museum now prepares to open Sept. 22 in Exposition Park.
