VENTURA : City to Weigh Funds for Aquarium Plans
Organizers of a proposed aquarium and marine education center at Ventura Harbor will brief the City Council tonight on their plans before the council decides whether to invest more in the project.
Al Fiori, who initiated the project, is requesting an additional $30,000 so that he can begin soliciting more funds and estimating the final cost of the project. The funds will also go toward more detailed architectural, exhibit and landscape plans, he said.
Fiori said plans call for the center to include an expanded Channel Islands National Park visitor center, an outdoor shipbuilding facility, indoor and outdoor aquariums, fish hatcheries, an Imax-Cinemax large-screen theater and a research center for Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
The city has already funded $10,000 of preliminary work on the project. The city’s economics committee recommended last Wednesday that the city and the Ventura Port District each pay half of the additional $30,000. The port district owns the proposed site for the center.
The council will meet with Fiori today at 6 p.m. and consider the funding request during its regular meeting at 7:30.
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