Plans for tribute to Jackson expand
Plans to honor late pop icon Michael Jackson and his family’s roots here have expanded to possibly include a golf course and an amusement park with characteristics of Jackson’s Neverland Ranch and Chicago’s former Riverview amusement park.
The latest addition to plans that already include a Jackson family museum, a performing arts center and a 300-room hotel are slated to be built on about 100 acres of city-owned vacant land, said Odie Anderson, president of the project.
“Everything is in the planning stages at this point, but we’re moving on a fast track and we’re looking forward to actually breaking ground sometime in 2010,” he said.
The project will probably be built in phases, with the museum, arts center and hotel built first, followed by the golf course and theme park.
The project could cost $1 billion over a 10-year construction period.
Private donors would foot the bulk of the bill, but Anderson said he was also looking to Gary for tax incentives. He would not say how much money had been raised since October, when Mayor Rudy Clay announced two new foundations to raise money for the project.
Project officials are considering whether to build a replica of the Jackson family home or have a bus tour of the Jackson family’s former haunts.
The theme park will have roller coasters, trains and other rides familiar to anyone who sought thrills at Riverview or was a guest at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, Anderson said.
“We’re trying to extract the best and come up with a combination that made Riverview so attractive for kids of all ages as well as [have] special themes of Neverland that would be reminiscent of the Jacksons,” Anderson said.
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