When Barrack’s private-equity firm, Colony Capital, took over Neverland in November 2008, averting foreclosure, even the groomed portion was going to seed. Jackson, self-exiled after his child-molestation acquittal to places like Bahrain and Las Vegas, hadn’t been home since early 2005. His 275 employees had dwindled to four. The amusement-park rides and steam train—operable only by California’s single licensed steam-train engineer—had been sold off to raise money. The petting zoo’s animals had been removed by animal-rescue groups; the snakes from the reptile barn were, um, released into the wild.
Since then, Barrack’s team has worked steadily to rehabilitate the estate, refinishing the wood floors, relandscaping acres of grass, introducing more swans into the lakes, and repositioning Jackson’s statue of a long-gun-brandishing pirate to scare off coyotes. In the dance studio,
a solitary bulb lights a spot worn down by Jackson’s spinning.
The elephant barn now houses a labyrinth of walls filled with effusive notes penned by visitors from around the world. The only obvious reminders of Jackson’s complicated legacy are the bronze statues of children at play that dot the estate.
Barrack built his fortune making deals, and in some ways, Neverland began as just another one—a contrarian bet on a troubled asset, an operating business backed by real estate. Only in this case, the operating business was a person.
Colony would bail Jackson out of his substantial debt; in return, the firm would assume ownership of Neverland, and Jackson, after a thirteen-year hiatus, would go back to work to generate new revenue.
Jackson’s death, before he could carry out a planned comeback tour, turned the transaction into more of a straightforward real-estate play: Colony is fixing up Neverland and plans to sell it, at some point, for a profit
