Walt Disney Imagineering move Scott Trowbridge to a new dedicated Star Wars Studio at WDI

[FigmentJedi]

wants to build a museum at the Presidio, etc.

I know I'm quoting a several months old post, but not anymore. He's taking it to Chicago.

 

[omurice]

So the 59th anniversary came and went, where they announced that in one year from this day - it's the 60TH ANNIVERSARY!
Was anyone else expecting something, even just a hint of a tease of a SW overlay on DLR's Tomorrowland?
Was not expecting Darth Vader to interrupt the 59th press event, but anything would have been nice. Some crates on the stage with "Orange Harvest" on the side? An R2-D2 shaped hole in a box?
Michael Colglazier wearing a Star Tours pin on his lapel. Just anything...

 

[Matt_Black]

So the 59th anniversary came and went, where they announced that in one year from this day - it's the 60TH ANNIVERSARY!
Was anyone else expecting something, even just a hint of a tease of a SW overlay on DLR's Tomorrowland?
Was not expecting Darth Vader to interrupt the 59th press event, but anything would have been nice. Some crates on the stage with "Orange Harvest" on the side? An R2-D2 shaped hole in a box?
Michael Colglazier wearing a Star Tours pin on his lapel. Just anything...

I'd think they'd hold off on anything like that until nearer to Episode 7's release.

 

[dreamscometrue]

If they are just putting together a Star Wars project team now then we are at least 3-5 years from an announcement much less actual opening date for new rides, shows, lands and attractions

Hey, it was only 1 year, 3 months and 21 days
(I was revisiting the Scott Trowbridge thread to read about the dude, and saw this post lol)

 

[eddy21]

Ive heard rumors of someone named Tim Tarr in the running for a leadership position in this project.

 

[doctornick]

I'm reminded that Trowbridge was one of the lead designers for the Spider-Man ride, which makes me very excited for him being involved in this project.

 

[britain]

Eh... as soon as I saw that rendering with the pack of stormtroopers running at you, I thought to myself, "Those clearly won't be animatronics, they're going to be screens." That plus the Miceage rumor that the vehicle will be trackless is making me think that a Star Wars version of Remy's Crazy Adventure is going to be what we should expect. I sure hope that it will be augmented by a LOT of practical effects, sets & animatronics.

 

[AEfx]

I know I'm quoting a several months old post, but not anymore. He's taking it to Chicago.

Which was just such an incredibly daft decision, IMO.

 

[HauntedMansionFLA]

I'm reminded that Trowbridge was one of the lead designers for the Spider-Man ride, which makes me very excited for him being involved in this project.

I was reading about Trowbridge and it looks like he was involved with the early stages of Harry Potter land. He has an impressive resume which is a good thing.

 

[FigmentJedi]

Which was just such an incredibly daft decision, IMO.

Not really. George lives in Chicago half the time now. His current wife's a native and head of a big investment firm based out of the city.

Besides, and speaking from an Iowan bias here, the Midwest needs something like the museum way more then California does. I'm tired of East/West Coasters getting all the cool stuff.

 

[MonkeyHead]

Trowbridge is extremely accomplished. Spider-man is still one of, if not the best rides in the world and he did head that. He left before the majority of Potter was done.

Give credit to Coup, Mason, Gilmore and Craig.

 

[articos]

I'm reminded that Trowbridge was one of the lead designers for the Spider-Man ride, which makes me very excited for him being involved in this project.

He was the Show Producer for Spiderman, and involved with the production and design of most of UIOA.

 

[articos]

Trowbridge is extremely accomplished. Spider-man is still one of, if not the best rides in the world and he did head that. He left before the majority of Potter was done.

Give credit to Coup, Mason, Gilmore and Craig.

Right. WWOHP was headed creatively by Thierry Coup and Stuart Craig, but Paul Daurio was the Show Producer for the land and Steve Jayson's group was tasked with coming up with Butterbeer and the food and beverage.

 

[DisneyGentleman]

Yousa post is not funny. Mesa sad now

Or they can build a restaurant themed to a Tusken Camp, call it "Little Orphan Anni", and locate a coffee shop next door called "Daddy Starbucks". That would be quite the clash of universes, worthy of a recitation of canon by Patton Oswalt (dressed as Oswalt the Rabbit, of course).

Or not....

 

[DisneyGentleman]

I'm reminded that Trowbridge was one of the lead designers for the Spider-Man ride, which makes me very excited for him being involved in this project.

Yep, just as excited as we were when we heard a guy named Lucas would be doing the prequels...

 

[DisneyJayL]

I guess this is a GOOD thing, right?

 

[the.dreamfinder]

I know I'm quoting a several months old post, but not anymore. He's taking it to Chicago.

Which was just such an incredibly daft decision, IMO.

Not really. George lives in Chicago half the time now. His current wife's a native and head of a big investment firm based out of the city.

Besides, and speaking from an Iowan bias here, the Midwest needs something like the museum way more then California does. I'm tired of East/West Coasters getting all the cool stuff.

We'll see how long this project sticks around in Chi-Town.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/arti...cas-museum-plan-hits-a-major-legal-speed-bump
Given the revelations the Presidio Trust rigged the Crissy Field project evaluation process to deliberately spite George, we may yet see this museum return to the Presidio.

 

[AEfx]

Not really. George lives in Chicago half the time now. His current wife's a native and head of a big investment firm based out of the city.

Besides, and speaking from an Iowan bias here, the Midwest needs something like the museum way more then California does. I'm tired of East/West Coasters getting all the cool stuff.

But where he lives is kind of irrelevant to where the museum should be. It's not like he's going to be working there regularly or anything.

There is a reason that stuff goes where it does - mainly east/west coast - because that's where the population is, that's where the travel is. Sure, there are some fans who will assuredly go to Chicago just to see the museum, but people don't generally go on "vacation" to Chicago. It's some place you generally travel if you have a business need.

It's not that Chicago is a bad place, it's just that far, far more folks would have visited it in Southern California, for example, than will ever see it in Chicago. I haven't followed it too closely, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure that they only reason it landed there was because of financial incentives they were willing to offer - which is great to reduce start up costs but really won't help it's long term prospects.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

But where he lives is kind of irrelevant to where the museum should be. It's not like he's going to be working there regularly or anything.

There is a reason that stuff goes where it does - mainly east/west coast - because that's where the population is, that's where the travel is. Sure, there are some fans who will assuredly go to Chicago just to see the museum, but people don't generally go on "vacation" to Chicago. It's some place you generally travel if you have a business need.

It's not that Chicago is a bad place, it's just that far, far more folks would have visited it in Southern California, for example, than will ever see it in Chicago. I haven't followed it too closely, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure that they only reason it landed there was because of financial incentives they were willing to offer - which is great to reduce start up costs but really won't help it's long term prospects.

George is going to pay for the whole thing himself. The issue at the Presidio was more political than financial due to some high society types and the Trust who didn't approve of a "Star Wars Museum" being built at the Presidio. (Putting aside this museum will be primarily devoted Illustration, Animation, and Cinematic arts) Aside from his wife Mellody, Chicago appealed to George because Mayor Rahm Emanuel had promised to cut through all the red tape to get the museum built. An advocacy group has put the project into litigation for the past six months, so we'll see if it even gets built there.

https://pando.com/2015/07/06/ron-co...cas/6d1b9428354061a571e6c62706a2279280ac0864/
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross column today exposed a conspiracy at the Presidio Trust to kill the (George) Lucas Cultural Arts Museum, which was brought to light through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by tech heavyweights including Ron Conway, Laurene Powell Jobs, Sean Parker, Marissa Mayer, Biz Stone, and Reid Hoffman.

Yes, it seems that the Presidio Trust, the blue-blooded government outpost created by Congress in 1996 to manage most of San Francisco’s Presidio National Park, has been caught conspiring to stop the construction of a museum built to house George Lucas’ collection of comic and digital art.

For shame!

In the spring of 2013, George Lucas submitted a bid to build the museum -- a 93,000 square foot waterfront homage to the Beaux Artes splendor of the Panama Pacific Exhibition -- at the site of a current Sports Basement in Chrissy Field. The project had the backing of all sorts of important people, from Dianne Feinstein to Martin Scorcese to MC Hammer to… well.. all of the people listed in Conway’s email.

(Notably absent from Conway's list: Marc Benioff who apparently recused himself sometime before his wife Lynne was appointed to the board of the Presidio Trust last week.)

The Trust is reported to have offered Lucas the site, with some conditions. Lucas refused to cede design considerations, at which point the City offered him an alternative site for the project just north of AT&T Park on the Embarcadero.

Ultimately the plans collapsed and Lucas now intends to build his museum in Chicago. The Crissy Field Sports Basement will remain a Sports Basement.

But Conway and his friends weren’t going to let the Presidio kill the Lucas Museum without a fight. They bandied together to FOIA the Presidio trustees and, as a result, discovered that some of them had apparently conspired to reject the project, regardless of of its merits.

Most notable was this exchange between Trust staffer Tia Lombardi and a consultant, Brent Glass:

Lombardi: “(Trust executive director Craig Middleton and I) talked for another 40 minutes or so about the fact that GL’s [George Lucas] building will NEVER get built.”

Glass: “Perfect! Now we have to produce some really good proposals.”

Lombardi: “I have no worries.”

That exchange was mixed among other desultory references to the project and avowals of solidarity in making sure it was never built. Another interesting tidbit in the catalog -- on February 22, 2014, Glass remarks in an email:

“I only wish some smart art critic would weigh in on LCAM’s lack of curatorial vision.”

A week later, the Chronicle’s urban design critic John King published a piece dragging the proposal through the critical mud, calling it “boilerplate Beaux Arts, ornamentation without imagination,” and “ a generic box gussied up with arches and domes, with no more depth than a street on a Hollywood lot.” King went so far as to use the words of the city’s revered 20th century Beaux Artes master, Bernard Maybeck, against the Lucas project, “a conglomeration of soulless buildings dolled up in holiday attire.”

Lucas was a longtime friend of the Trust. In 2005, he moved LucasFilm, LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic to the Presidio, helping the park meets its ‘fiscally sustainable by 2013 mandate.’ In a weird twist, Disney bought those companies in 2012, three years after Walt Disney’s heirs, led by his San Francisco society daughter Diane Disney Miller, opened the Walt Disney Family Museum -- in the Presidio.

The museum kerfluffle has likely made for some uncomfortable moments at society parties in San Francisco in recent years, pitting the one percent against itself as it has. An ugly business, that. When the Governor, the Mayor, Dianne Feinstein, Dede Wilsey and the tech industry find themselves squaring off against the Haas family, heirs to Levi’s, nobody wins. Except Sports Basement.

But anyone who knows a thing about Ron Conway knows that he is a champion of transparency in government and an enemy of backroom handshakes. And that’s not all. As the email from Redwood Pacific -- the preferred lobbying group of Conway (and the California Republican Party) -- makes clear: it’s for the children.

McLear writes:

It is unfortunate that Bay Area kids were robbed of this national treasure that was blocked completely behind closed doors, but the mission of the FOIA request was to bring this conspiracy and collusion to light.

Still, at least Conway the watchdog has exposed the underbelly of San Francisco’s leisure class and their unseemly government influence, which conspired in this case to maliciously pooh-pooh George Lucas’ architectural tastes.

More importantly, this transparency push by Conway, Laurene Powell Jobs, George Lucas et al has brought to light the second worst example of secret collusion between obscenely wealthy Bay Area power players in living memory.

The first, of course, would be the time when Steve Jobs, George Lucas and a half dozen others archetected the single biggest wage theft in Silicon Valley history.

But, yeah, this Presidio thing is really bad too.

 

[misterID]

Eh... as soon as I saw that rendering with the pack of stormtroopers running at you, I thought to myself, "Those clearly won't be animatronics, they're going to be screens." That plus the Miceage rumor that the vehicle will be trackless is making me think that a Star Wars version of Remy's Crazy Adventure is going to be what we should expect. I sure hope that it will be augmented by a LOT of practical effects, sets & animatronics.

There better be more than SCREENZ involved in this attraction. He was also involved in the Mummy attraction which is a good thing, IMO.