Neverland Ranch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

THE SANTA YNEZ VALLEY DOES NOT, TO MY KNOWLEDGE, SHINE LIKE A NATIONAL OR ANY OTHER BRAND OF GUITAR: As we jump forward to the third- and fourth-order questions following the death of Michael Jackson, one I've been working through is the future of Neverland Ranch, Jackson's deteriorating Xanadu in Los Olivos, California, currently owned by a consortium of investors and some .

It strikes me that Neverland is too large and expensive for any purchaser to maintain in its most advanced state, as the WSJ reported earlier this month:

The 2,600-acre estate, named for a magical place where children never age, has since yielded to reality and time. The amusement-park rides, elephants and orangutans have been hauled away. The two helicopter landing pads are empty. The private railway line stands idle and the ornate "Neverland" gates that framed the driveway are in storage. Bats hang over the doorway to the building that housed Mr. Jackson's private arcade; guano stains the threshold....

Among the $35 million worth of amenities he added were enough amusement-park rides for a state fair, a zoo, a go-kart track and two separate railway lines -- one large enough to accommodate full-sized antique steam engines.

A 50-seat theater features state-of-the-art projection and sound systems, a private viewing balcony, and a stage that includes trap doors for magicians' assistants. Mr. Jackson converted a rustic red barn into a herpetarium with displays for a dozen exotic and venomous snakes, including a Burmese python and a monocled cobra. He created a Neverland Valley Fire Department, with a small fleet of working engines and full-time firefighters who were occasionally dispatched to battle brushfires on neighboring properties.

If the similarly isolated Hearst Castle can draw 1 million visitors a year and Graceland 600-700K annually, how many international visitors would travel to Neverland Ranch?

Some things will need to be resolved first: as with the upstairs at Graceland where Elvis Presley died, I'm presuming Jackson's bedroom would be off-limits both for privacy and additional because-it-may-have-been-a-crime-scene reasons. They'd have to decide whether to return the amusement park rides to the facility. And I assume Jackson will not be interred there, as he reportedly never returned to Neverland after the 2005 trial.

Still, even with those limitations, I have reason to believe that there's a large number of people who would like to be received at Neverland. And its co-owners are starting to think the same thing ...