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Follow-up File
Follow-up File: Michael Jackson museum, complex plans in limbo
From the See the latest Follow-up File here! series
Phil Wieland
phil.wieland@nwi.com, (219) 662-5324 Updated 17 hrs ago
Philip Potempa, The Times
Starting in 2009, just months after Michael Jackson’s death, his father, Joe Jackson
David Becker
Joe Jackson, left, the father of Michael Jackson and Rudy Clay, mayor of Gary, at a news conference Oct. 28, 2009, to officially announce the start of the Jackson Family Project and capital campaign inside the Brenden Theatre at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas.
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.
Background
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.”
Welp, that's kinda disappointing.