The Louisville house-turned-museum where legendary boxer and civil rights activist Muhammad Ali was raised is on the market - with the current owners hoping that new buyers will continue its operations.
Co-owner George Bochetto first opened the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home to the public in 2016, shortly before Ali's death. Bochetto and his now-deceased business partner Jared Weiss spent $300,000 restoring the run-down, vacant home and buying the neighboring properties, in effort to honor Ali's legacy.
"You walk into this house ... you're going back to 1955, and you're going to be in the middle of the Clay family home," Bochetto told the Associated Press at the time. "We're trying to demonstrate where it all began."
Bochetto considers Ali's humble home to be an example of how anyone can find success.
"You don't have to be from any particular neighborhood, any particular kind of house," he told the Associated Press in 2016. "You can be from anywhere and you can become great ... And this is a living monument to just that."
Shortly after the museum opened, it attracted international attention as fans lined the streets in front of the home during Ali's funeral procession. Bochetto's museum ran into financial troubles, however, which forced the museum to close two years after its opening.
While the boxing fanatic received offers to transport Ali's home to Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Saudi Arabia, Bochetto insisted that the building remain in Louisville.
"It's an important piece of Louisville history, Kentucky history and I think it needs to stay right where it is," he said, according to the Associated Press.
Bochetto and his business partners hope that someone with "marketing and operational know-how" will buy the property and turn it into a successful museum.
"I want to make sure that it continues in that fashion and never goes back to where it's abandoned or dilapidated," he told the Associated Press. "That should never have happened."
