LAS VEGAS | Details on the Jackson family museum and entertainment center that Gary Mayor Rudy Clay hopes to build in the King of Pop's hometown were as slim as the oversized $10,000 check that served as the centerpiece of Wednesday's announcement.

But Clay insisted, twice, that "we're going to take this ball into the end zone." The plan, announced at the swank Palms Casino in Las Vegas, is to build the tourist draw on a 10-acre stretch the city owns between City Hall and the Genesis Convention Center.

The $10,000 check came from Johnny Brenden, president and CEO of Brenden Theatres Corp. His theater inside the Palms hosted Wednesday's announcement, which also drew Joe Jackson, father of the late Michael Jackson.

Brenden said he contributed to similar projects before, and he called Jackson "an unbelievable person" worthy of support. Without irony, Joe Jackson stepped over to Brenden at the microphone and said "that was a large check," apparently referring to its physical size.

None of the speakers at the event would pin down a projected cost or timeline for the project. But Kim Bray, executive assistant at Asbury Park, N.J.-based Sand and Stone Construction, estimated the cost to be between $20 million and $30 million.

Bray, who said his company would build the museum and entertainment center, has traveled to Gary at least three times in the past year to speak with Clay about the project.

The $10,000 check apparently went to a Tinley Park, Ill., nonprofit organization set up in the Jackson family's name, according to Odie Anderson, who said he was one of three members of the organization's board of directors. The other members, he said, are Joe Jackson and Danny Hill, of Sand and Stone.

But Simon Sahouri, publisher of Las Vegas-based LVH magazine and another speaker at the event, said no board of directors had been established yet and the event's participants all were equally involved in the project. Clay, Anderson and Sahouri all said decisions had not yet been made about eventual control of the project, whether private, public or a partnership of the two.

As for the museum and performance center's projected site, Clay said during the announcement that "we have the wherewithal, we have the love, and we have the land."

Afterward, he allowed that the Gary City Council still had not approved the land's transfer to the project, but that the "majority are behind it" -- as long as a "developer of a hotel and museum is willing to build without taxpayer money."

A four-page glossy treatment of the project also referred to a hotel, but the news conference didn't include the subject.

Clay said a museum and performing arts center focused on the Jackson family would "surpass Elvis Presley," referring to Memphis and its Graceland tourist attraction, and that the project would create "thousands of jobs." He also said he made the trip to Las Vegas on his own dime.

While the money, land and oversight of the project remain vague, Clay insisted that Gary deserved the Jackson family museum and performance center.

"In the end," he said, "there's no place like home."