Bye-Bye Beetle Bailey

Mort Walker, the creator of the Beetle Bailey comic strip, is selling his bankrupt International Museum of Cartoon Art building for $2.75 million.

Walker is selling the building to pay back an anonymous arts patron who gave the museum a loan in October 2001 to avoid foreclosure.

The building is being purchased by a group of developers and investors and Lynn University for $2.75 million, The Palm Beach Post reported Saturday. The group plans to replace the museum building with a 140-room hotel and 400-seat theater.

Lynn University will use the theater for performances and the hotel for training internships in Lynn's hospitality management program.

Walker said he will move the museum to Stamford, Conn. Most of the museum's works already are in storage in Connecticut.

The museum, which had been $2 million in debt, earlier tried to auction its prized exhibit, a set of 1928 Mickey Mouse pencil sketches valued at more than $3 million. But the drawings failed to sell. Hundreds of other drawings sold for less than anticipated, and many more didn't sell.

Walker founded the museum in Connecticut in 1972. It was moved to Boca Raton in 1990 from Rye Brook, N.Y., and opened in 1996. A proposed partnership with Florida Atlantic University, in which the university would have paid off the museum's debts, fell through.