The revenge of George Lucas

One thing you got to admit about the guy: He really knows how to piss people off. The same guy who brought you Howard the Duck and Jar Jar Binks has now picked a fight with his tony neighbors in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

Lucas moved into the area in 1978, a year after his mega-hit Star Wars was released. He purchased 6,100 acres and began constructing his Lucasfilm empire, starting with Skywalker Ranch. His neighbors seemed to love the fact that he was in the area.

George Lucas

All that changed recently. After he announced in 2009 he was going to build a third facility — a 269,701-square-foot digital studio on a third ranch called Grady — a once defunct homeowners group resurrected itself last summer and announced its opposition to the project as county officials were putting their stamp of approval on it. The group said Lucas should find a "far more appropriate location for the development." The group sent a letter to Lucas that said his project would "pose a serious and alarming threat to the nature of our valley and our community," "dwarf the average Costco warehouse," and generate light pollution so that "our dark starry skies would be destroyed." As a result, the county Board of Supervisors postponed its vote on the project, although it was still expected to sail through at a later date.

But Lucas decided not to wait and pulled the plug. Tom Forster, head of community relations at Lucasfilm, said the company feared the homeowners would file lawsuits that would delay construction for years. On his Website, Lucas said he would relocate the facility to a place "that sees us as a creative asset, not the evil empire."

But that’s not all. Lucas sold the property to a philanthropic group, the Marin Community Foundation, which plans to construct low income housing there. Forster said "George, being the great guy he is, doesn’t want to build more housing for rich people since Marin is loaded with them."

Indeed it is and now a whole bunch of them are really upset. One of them said she now fears for her life, lives in "sheer terror," and likened it to living in Syria. Another letter writer said "You’re going to bring drug dealers, all this crime and lowlife in here."

And just think. They could have had Howard the Duck and Jar Jar Binks.