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LAS VEGAS, Nevada : Four months after his son's surprise death, Joe Jackson said Wednesday he intends to lead an effort to build a Michael Jackson museum in the family's hometown of Gary, Indiana.
Rudolph Clay, the mayor of Gary, said the city was donating 10 acres of vacant land to the project, but that was the only concrete aspect of an otherwise vague plan, which would also include a hotel performing arts centre.
The overall cost, what the museum will contain, who will run it and when it would be completed were unknown, according to Jackson, Clay and others speaking at a media event in Los Angeles.
"Fans all over the world will be very proud when this takes place," Joe Jackson said. "It will be a great monument."
It was also not clear if the project would have the blessing of Jackson's estate. Michael Jackson appointed two music industry figures John Branca and John McClain to act as executors of his estate.
"There's going to be people who say you can't get it done, you shouldn't get it done," Clay said. "We say to the naysayers, we are going to the end zone.
"We're going to make sure there's a Jackson family museum built in Gary, Indiana, and there’s going to be a Michael Jackson performing arts centre."
It is unclear whether the Jackson family will be contributing to the cost of building the complex, said businessman Simon Shouri, who said Clay was helping with the fundraising effort.
Shouri said he doesn’t know how much money the undertaking would cost or if it would be a non-profit or for-profit endeavor.
"We're still in the planning stages, this is the first step," said Shouri, publisher of Las Vegas Hollywood Magazine.
"We're open to whatever ways to make this dream a reality. The purpose is to establish the memory of one of the greatest musical icons we’ve ever had."
Also uncertain is what the museum would contain and whether it would include displays reflecting the darker side of the Jackson family saga, Shouri said. Jackson’s death from an overdose of a powerful anaesthetic, which is being probed as a possible homicide, is just the latest controversy that has engulfed a clan beset by accusations of child abuse and schisms over money.
The fundraising campaign was kicked off in Las Vegas because its first donation came in the form of a 10,000-dollar cheque from Johnny Brenden, the owner of a movie theatre at the Palms Hotel-Casino where Michael Jackson and his children frequently saw films when the pop star stayed at the resort.
Officials from Clay's office circulated a four-page, colour brochure that boasted of the "conceptual design" for the Jackson Family Museum and Hotel which, it says, would be adjacent to a convention centre in the working-class town from which the Jackson Five sprang.
The only indication of a timeline was that the brochure predicted a "new 5-star hotel coming in 2011," a tight timeline given that the fundraising efforts for the rest of the complex just began.
- AFP/il
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