Philly lawyer buys into Muhammad Ali childhood home

LIKE A DOG chasing a car, George Bochetto has been chasing Muhammad Ali's Louisville, Ky., birthplace for some time.

And now that he has it, he's not precisely sure what he will do with it. Whatever it is, it will be done with dignity.

The Center City lawyer and former Pennsylvania boxing commissioner feels it is a shrine, and should be treated as one, but the details are still forming.

It's an understatement to say that Bochetto, a onetime boxer himself, is a devotee of the former heavyweight champion, humanitarian and onetime resident of Cherry Hill.

Bochetto already owns a "substantial" amount of Ali memorabilia, including "original artwork that he created, boxing gloves, robes, paintings that he's autographed, particularly the iconic photo of him standing over a felled Sonny Liston," says Bochetto, who even owns "an original Wheaties box with Muhammad Ali on the cover with the Wheaties still inside."

No surprise that when he learned in 2012 that the Louisville house in which then-Cassius Clay grew up was for sale - he wanted it.

To use a boxing analogy, he was beaten to the punch by Las Vegas real-estate investor Jared Weiss, who bought the small one-story, wood-frame house for $70,000 - sight unseen.

Weiss told me by phone he wanted "to keep the integrity of Muhammad Ali's childhood home intact," but he had not formulated a blueprint. There were a few early ideas and plans that didn't bear fruit, according to reporting in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

A few months back, Bochetto reached out to Weiss, and they agreed to be partners, but partners still without a concrete plan.

Bochetto tells me they hadn't decided whether to form a nonprofit or to run the homestead as a commercial venture, whether to charge admission and how the home would be administered.

"The furthest thing from my mind is money. This is an opportunity to connect with my boyhood hero, who I followed almost with religious devotion," Bochetto says. The boxer who called himself "The Greatest" has been fighting a slow, losing bout with Parkinson's disease since 1984.

"My goal is to restore the home to its authentic condition, with historical integrity," Bochetto says. "This is a revered piece of Americana. How many people get to do that in their lifetime?"

Bochetto also has a contract to buy an adjacent vacant property, to be used as a reception center for visitors and a parking lot.

Bochetto's dream is to restore the home to the way it looked in the 1950s when the Clay family lived there. The estimated cost of the project could run as high as $500,000.

Only a bronze plaque in front of the home announces its significance: "Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born on Jan. 17, 1942 . . . and grew up & lived in this house . . . Here is where young Clay's values were instilled."

Bochetto's had conversations about the restoration with Ali's Louisville-based brother, Rahman Ali, whom I could not reach. Bochetto has not yet been in contact with "The Greatest," or his wife, Lonnie.

He plans to go to Louisville on May 15 to begin work on the project and hopes to meet with Muhammad Ali and his wife. They have a large spread in the Louisville area.

Bochetto also plans to meet with officials of the Muhammad Ali Museum in downtown Louisville to explain that his plans "are to complement the museum, certainly not to compete with it."

Once he finds a contractor capable of doing historical restoration, the job should be completed before the end of the year, he says.

"If it were an ordinary Cape Cod, you could renovate in a month," says Bochetto, "but this has to be done in a dignified, careful manner to forever preserve its significance."