GARY — Plans for a $300 million Michael Jackson entertainment complex appear to have been relegated to the back burner, if they are even still on the stove.
Discussed off and on while the King of Pop was still alive, plans for a family-oriented complex seemed to take a leap forward when his father Joe Jackson and then-Mayor Rudy Clay announced at a news conference in Las Vegas plans for a $300 million complex in 2009 shortly after MJ’s death.
The artist’s sketch of the proposal promised a lavish landscape on a 10-acre parcel owned by the city between City Hall and the Genesis Convention Center with a hotel, museum and a shopping center with restaurants and a state-of-the-art performing arts center.
The fundraising for the project started at the Vegas event with a check presented for $10,000, and Jackson hosted private events to sell memorial bricks, priced from $100, and other features, such as benches for $1,000.
A year later, the city gave the project a two-month extension to get registered as a tax-exempt nonprofit in Indiana. By then, the project also included a golf course and stadium and a prediction by Clay that construction could begin as early as 2011.
What’s next
Apparently not much.
Asked for an update of the project, Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said, “While the thought of using Roosevelt School or a portion of it was a part of the previous discussions, there is no update in regard to a Michael Jackson Museum.”
SOURCE: NWI
Michael’s father being in talks about anything requiring money always makes me skeptical – same goes for some of Michael’s siblings. I certainly wouldn’t be expecting the city to fund it given that it is a depressed area. Very sad for Gary and for everyone. But the funding would understandably have to come from some other source – a wealthy backer or financier. Meantime Jermaine has talked up plans for a Jackson theme park in China and (previously) a five star resort to house Jackson family history in the Middle East. I think the idea of an MJ entertainment centre in Gary has long fallen by the wayside.
How in the hell are they suppose to do business in communist and fascist countries?! That’s not to be taken seriously, right?!