After lengthy consideration, Star Wars creator George Lucas has decided to build a museum housing his vast collection of art and movie memorabilia in Chicago, a city which beat out locations in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The decision is not yet official but it is expected to meet unanimous approval by the board of directors of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

The move comes after strong lobbying by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel to bring the one-of-a-kind, interactive museum to Chicago’s lakefront. The proposed venue of the new institution would overlook the shoreline of Lake Michigan in an area that is currently a parking lot located between Soldier Field, home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears, and McCormick Place, the largest convention center in the U.S.

That parking lot falls under the ownership of the Chicago Park District and it would be near three other popular tourist attractions in the city, the Adler Planetarium, the Field Museum, and the Shedd Aquarium.

Mayor Emmanuel organized a task force in April to lure Lucas to the Windy City, which is the hometown of the movie mogul’s wife Mellody Hobson and where the couple currently reside part-time. The bid to put Chicago in contention for the museum came after federal officials in San Francisco rejected a proposal to build the permanent exhibition on waterfront park land overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Choosing Chicago is the right decision for the museum, but a difficult decision for me personally because of my strong personal and professional roots in the Bay Area,” said Lucas in a prepared statement.

The filmmaker is from Modesto, California while the headquarters for his companies LucasFilm and Skywalker Sound are located in Marin County. His visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic resides at the Presidio in San Francisco. It had been widely speculated that Lucas’ museum, which is set to include valuable Norman Rockwell paintings, various Americana, movie posters, and a large collection of items from the Star Wars films, would be located in the city where he built his movie career.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is set to open in 2018.