Michael Jackson’s former Neverland Ranch in California was sold to American billionaire Ron Burkle, his spokesman said Thursday at a heavily discounted price of about $ 22 million.
The late King of Pop turned his massive mansion into a fairytale-themed retreat complete with a toy train, Ferris wheel and orangutans, and wrote some of his top hits there.
But Neverland was also the infamous place where Jackson invited children to visit and sleep with him, and the site of alleged sexual abuse of minors, according to allegations against him.
After Jackson’s death, it was renamed Sycamore Valley Ranch in 2009.
Burkle, a Montana businessman with investments ranging from grocery stores to the entertainment industry, bought the farm “as a land banking opportunity,” his spokesperson told AFP regarding the acquisition of land for long-term investment.
The $ 22 million price reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirming to AFP as an approximate source familiar with the agreement would significantly reduce the ranch’s original price from $ 100 million in 2015.
That juicy figure, considered “optimistic” by brokers even then, was cut to $ 31 million last year, but the ranch remained unsold and was pulled off the market.
Burkle recently flew over to explore a neighboring property, which will likely be a new branch of his Soho House network of private clubs, when he saw the ranch, after which he contacted the owner, according to the spokesman.
Michael Jackson reportedly paid $ 19.5 million for the property in the 1980s. Thomas Barrack Jr.’s investment firm Colony Capital bought the ranch from the singer, then heavily in debt, the previous year for $ 22. 5 million. are dead.
Burkle had previously served as an advisor to the singer on business matters, including settling debts incurred through his lavish lifestyle in the years leading up to his death.
The 1,100-acre ranch, located 40 miles from Santa Barbara, features a six-bedroom main house and three guest accommodations, a lake with a waterfall, tennis courts, several barns and animal shelters.
Jackson’s farm was raided in 2003 as part of a child sex abuse case against him, and police confiscated a large repertoire of pornography and images of naked children.
Jackson was acquitted of the case in 2005.
Last year, the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” broadcast testimony of two men who claimed that Jackson sexually assaulted them as children on the ranch, including the attic, master bedroom and pool.
Jackson’s estate, which sued HBO for $ 100 million for the “posthumous murder of a character,” denies all charges, as Jackson did in his lifetime.