GARY, Ind. (AP) -- This city of rusting steel mills and ill repute announced it had been picked to host a national beauty pageant -- and everybody laughed.

The one-time murder capital decided the best place for the post-pageant coronation ball would be in a nearby shopping mall -- again, everybody laughed.

The pageant picked William Shatner, captain of the starship Enterprise, public face of Priceline.com, smarmy emcee in the recent beauty-pageant film "Miss Congeniality," to host the pageant. People almost fell over laughing.

But none of this is a joke.

Friday night, 51 curvaceous beauties will compete for the title of Miss USA, performing, strutting and smiling their perfect smiles smack dab in the middle of downtown Gary, Ind. -- -- --

The paint on the abandoned hotel, across from the pageant venue, is peeling. To hide it, the city hung a massive banner bearing the smiling face of Miss USA 2000.

"Miss USA Pageant 2001 -- GARY STYLE," the banner shouts.

The people of Gary have great expectations of the pageant. It will "put a face of the city out there for public consumption nationally and, to some extent, worldwide that will counter the image that's out there," said Mayor Scott King. "It's the city redefining itself."

But if the Miss USA Pageant, traditionally considered a lesser version of Miss America, is the key to erasing Gary's unsavory reputation, it's going to have its work cut out.

Always a blue-collar town, Gary developed into a mighty industrial force on the strength of the nearby lakefront steel mills. Locals will proudly say it was "brute work" that built the city up to its heyday in the 1950s and '60s.

When steel began downsizing in the 1970s, Gary started falling apart. Residents fled the downtown, businesses boarded up and gangs and drug trade became commonplace. A reputation for crime and urban decay was forged -- the city was proclaimed the country's murder capital several times in the 1990s -- and the words "beauty" and "Gary" were rarely used in the same sentence.

There have been failed attempts over the years to revitalize Gary, to take advantage of its lakefront and location 30 miles from Chicago. But the missing ingredient was money.

That ingredient was delivered in the mid-1990s when Donald Trump and other developers brought floating casinos to Gary. The financial spark from gambling revenues -- about $25 million a year -- started a new revitalization push, and the city now has wide-eyed plans: a $300 million entertainment complex along the shoreline; a $47 million downtown redevelopment that includes a minor-league baseball park and a new police station.

The redevelopment is all in the early stages now, but increased police efforts have cut the city's murder and crime rates and there is a buzz around town that times may actually be changing. That buzz was bolstered when the Miss USA Pageant -- which, not coincidentally, is half-owned by Trump -- agreed to bring its festivities to this unlikely site.

"We've planted the seeds over the past five years," said Ben Clement, the city's head of economic development. "And now it's time to see them grow."

But will the Miss USA pageant be the fertilizer Gary needs?

The pageant will air as a prime-time special on CBS, with pre-shot footage of the city that producers say will "focus on the positive."

"You can't pay for that kind of publicity," said Paula Shugart, the pageant's co-director.

Some of Gary's neighbors are not convinced.

"A lot of times they take the girls out and shoot pictures at some of the local sites," said Randall Hill, a resident of nearby Merrillville. "I'd like to see where they're going to take them in Gary." -- -- --

The pageant itself will be held in Gary's downtown Genesis Convention Center, a newly remodeled facility adjacent to the city government buildings, but awkwardly close to boarded-up homes and a storefront that boasts cigarettes and XXX-rated movies.

The pageant will be followed by the coronation, to be held in the center court of the Southlake Mall in Hobart, 10 miles away. Organizers say the mall was the only place close enough that would hold the more than 1,500 people expected to attend.

And besides, nothing lights up a tiara like the gentle red hue of a neon food-court sign.

"My initial reaction was, 'The coronation ball is in a mall?"' said Miss Indiana, Sarah McClary. "For Teen USA, it was in this big, beautiful auditorium.

"But I'm sure they're working real hard and they'll find a real unique and beautiful way to decorate it," she added, diplomatically.

Indeed. Once the various kiosks that fill the center court are removed -- including "Clip 'N Go Hair" and one that sells a weight-loss drug dubbed the "Fat Predator" -- the roughly rectangular, two-story atrium will be done up with ribbons and bows, ice sculptures, food stations and bars. Well-heeled guests will dance beneath the room's octagonal skylights, all the while surrounded by several jewelry stores, a pair of escalators and a Fannie May candy shop.

It fits in, organizers say, with the event's new attitude, which stresses entertainment and eschews some of the formality of past pageants.

"We're having fun," Shugart said. "We're not afraid to laugh at ourselves a little bit."

The hope then, for fans of the pageant, for the confident officials of Gary, for the people who live here and hope to one day take pride in their hometown, is that the rest of the country won't be laughing as well.