North Bay Business Journal

SAN RAFAEL — The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) today completed its $4.06 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC, which was based in San Rafael for three decades and retains production facilities northwest of the city.

NOVATO — Marin Community Foundation today said it is seeking a developer to build affordable housing on filmmaker George Lucas’s Grady Ranch, a property north of San Rafael once pegged for a sizable state-of-the-art digital movie studio.

SAN RAFAEL — Marin County resident and filmmaker George Lucas, chairman, founder and chief executive officer of Lucasfilm Ltd., and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) today announced a deal to sell Lucasfilm to Disney for $4.05 billion in cash and stock.

Lucasfilm Ltd., which has a long history in Marin County and retains facilities northwest of San Rafael, announced that Kathleen Kennedy will become co-chair of the entertainment and media production company as its founder, Star Wars creator and Marin County resident George Lucas, seeks to move forward with retirement plans.

Under the leadership of BEST (Building Economic Success Together), a new regional economic development initiative and a public-private partnership designed to facilitate business success in Sonoma County, seven incentives to attract Lucasfilm to Sonoma Country quickly appeared.

NOVATO — Lucasfilm has partnered with the Marin Community Foundation to explore options for building affordable housing on the Grady Ranch property near San Rafael that George Lucas originally planned for a sizable digital-movie studio.

SAN RAFAEL – The decision by Lucasfilm to withdraw advanced plans for a new digital movie studio in San Rafael’s Lucas Valley will reverberate throughout the Marin County economy for many years and result in the loss of hundreds of jobs and tens of millions of dollars to the regional economy.

The political class in Sacramento is obsessed with raising taxes, enacting new regulatory schemes and green economy pipedreams. But they should be focused on this stunning trend.

Marin County as a place to do business took a huge step backwards on April 10, 2012. On April 10, Skywalker Properties decided not to continue the pursuit of its Grady Ranch project. Not only did a major project with great potential economic benefit for the County get derailed and ultimately canceled, an influential landowner trying to generate business on his land was thwarted unnecessarily. Marin County supervisors are now trying to broker a solution as one leadership step forward; Marin Economic Forum has asked our state legislators to step in as well.

SAN RAFAEL — Filmmaker George Lucas has dropped plans to build a 270,000-square-foot digital movie studio northwest of San Rafael and will take the project elsewhere, his real estate company announced this afternoon.

SAN RAFAEL — The Marin County Board of Supervisors today listened to two hours of testimony for and against filmmaker George Lucas’ proposed Grady Ranch digital movie studio project northwest of San Rafael but put off action on an appeal of earlier project approval, agreeing with staff that newly obtained input on the project from state and federal regulators on the project needed further consideration.

To many observers, opposition to George Lucas’s proposed Grady Ranch digital film studio must seem like a scene from a bad movie.

The first thing to understand is that the master plan under which the project is proposed was approved by county officials in 1996. Sixteen years later, the famed filmmaker is asking to build his dream studio in the very place he started and in the county that has benefited so much artistically and economically from his genius.

SAN RAFAEL — An organization representing neighbors of a proposed 270,000-square-foot Lucasfilm digital movie production studio in Lucas Valley northwest of San Rafael has appealed the recent project approval by the Marin County Planning Commission.

MARIN COUNTY — Central and northern Marin office space markets have strengthened significantly in the past 12 months, with vacancy rates finally dipping below 20 percent for the county.

A number of major private-sector construction projects will be under way or are set to begin in 2012: Grady Ranch, San Rafael; Madera Vista, Corte Madera; East Washington Place, Petaluma; Marin County Emergency Operations Facility, San Rafael; Safeway expansion, Petaluma; Bell Village, Windsor; Multitenant warehouse, Napa; Kaiser data center expansion, Napa; The Barlow, Sebastopol; and Napa Century Center, Napa.

SAN RAFAEL — Kerner Optical LLC, once the cover name for Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic division, has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Rosa.

In today’s terrible economic times, it is rare to hear of any employer seeking to grow his business. George Lucas’ readiness to complete the final phase of the master plan for Lucasfilm — which was approved in 1996 — is a welcome counterpoint to the news of layoffs and businesses leaving Marin.