George Lucas's Lesson to NIMBYs: Careful What You Wish For

George Lucas spent a quarter of a century trying to expand the production studios his film company has long kept in Marin County, over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in an area of mostly rural land and high-priced housing. In the interim, he made the Indiana Jones franchise, a couple of one-off '80s classics, and three more Star Wars films, but during all that time he could never quite overcome the more mundane politics of building in the exurbs. This spring, after years of opposition from neighbors (who can’t in fact see his property from their front yards) and the fear of yet more delays, Lucas abruptly gave up on plans for a third studio on a rolling plot called Grady Ranch.

"As he said to me, 'my job is making movies, not engaging in yet another decade of planning dispute,'" says Thomas Peters, the president and CEO of the Marin Community Foundation.