LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson’s former Neverland Ranch in California has sold to US billionaire Ron Burkle, his spokesman said on Thursday, reportedly at a steeply discounted price of around $22 million.

The late “King of Pop” famously converted his sprawling, gated home into a fairytale-themed retreat — complete with toy railroad, Ferris wheel and orangutans — and penned some of his top hits on the ranch.

But Neverland was also the infamous location where Jackson invited children to visit and sleep over, and where he was accused of molesting young boys. It was rebranded after Jackson’s 2009 death as Sycamore Valley Ranch.

Burkle, a Montana-based businessman with investments ranging from supermarkets to the entertainment industry, purchased the ranch “as a land banking opportunity,” his spokesman said.

The $22 million price tag reported by the Wall Street Journal — and confirmed as roughly accurate, by a source familiar with the deal — would mark a dramatic decline from the ranch’s $100 million asking price in 2015.

That lofty fee, dubbed “optimistic” by realtors even at the time, was slashed to $31 million last year, but the ranch still did not sell and was taken off the market.

Burkle was flying in the region recently to scout a neighboring property as a possible new branch of his Soho House private club network when he spotted the ranch and called its owner, according to the spokesman. Jackson reportedly paid $19.5 million for the property in the 1980s.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2020