Hope Floats

Following the lead of Monterey, Baltimore and other cities where aquariums have helped revitalize downtowns, Long Beach on Saturday unveiled its huge gamble--the $117-million Aquarium of the Pacific.

The aquarium needs 1.6 million visitors a year to meet its overhead, a feat that would place it among the leading aquariums in the nation. As if that were not challenge enough, the three-level facility off San Pedro Bay seems to be carrying the weight of the city’s economic recovery on its back.

“The aquarium’s importance is huge,” said Long Beach City Councilman Les Robbins, who remembers the days when this same waterfront was known for a rundown amusement park, Navy honky-tonks and X-rated bookstores. “The aquarium is the cornerstone of all we are attempting to accomplish in the shoreline area.”

A special preview for charter members left visitors, who streamed through the turnstiles at a rate of 1,100 an hour for what was the first public viewing of the facility, buzzing excitedly.

With enough exhibit space to fill three football fields, the aquarium displays more than 12,000 animals, representing 550 species, from sharks and sea lions to delicate sea horses and moon jellies.

On Saturday, the sea creatures were an instant hit, mesmerizing children and adults. The aquarium re-creates three areas of the Pacific--the Baja and Southern California region, the Bering Sea and northern Pacific, and the tropical Pacific, including stunning recreations of a coral lagoon and barrier reef.

“It’s just wonderful,” said Nondice Powell, who with her husband, Bill, brought their two young grandchildren up from Costa Mesa. They watched intently as divers in wetsuits fed sharks, eels and yellowtail in the three-story-high predators tank. “I had no idea it would be like this,” she said.

Just outside the aquarium, construction workers were racing to complete work on Rainbow Harbor in time to meet the aquarium’s June 20 public opening. Rainbow Harbor, once a stagnant lagoon, has been dredged and beautified to create a park-like waterfront setting. When completed, it will be turned into a commercial harbor for party and fishing boats, aquarium research vessels and the tall ships Californian and American Pride.

The new harbor is part of Long Beach’s redevelopment gamble, known as the Queensway Bay project.

Rainbow Harbor--along with a 1,500-car parking garage, a pedestrian esplanade and construction of new streets and roads--added $125 million to the project’s cost.

Though the aquarium was built with private revenue bonds, the risk arises because the city guaranteed the bonds with hotel taxes and port fees.

The city is counting on repaying the costs of building the harbor and garage with parking fees and lease payments.

Much of the seed money came in grants and loans from the Clinton administration, which extended a helping hand to the city as it attempted to recover from a devastating series of economic blows suffered during the 1990s, including the Navy’s closure of its shipyard and base, a dramatic downsizing at the McDonnell Douglas aircraft manufacturing plant, and a seven-year real estate recession said to be the worst in California.

Using a world-class aquarium as the cornerstone of its recovery effort was an outgrowth of still another economic setback: the decision by the Walt Disney Co. in the early 1990s to abandon its plan to build a $3-billion waterfront theme park in Long Beach.

City Manager Jim Hankla said there had been hopes that DisneySea would do for Long Beach what Disney World had done for Orlando, Fla.

But Hankla said $10 million in market studies by Disney left city leaders thinking that their waterfront might have potential.

“We decided maybe we ought to see how far we could take it,” Hankla said. In 1994, the city decided to go with an aquarium. “The Coastal Commission loved the idea. Historically, our waterfront has been for the people. We were putting it in a position so it will be for the people again. We were off to the races.”

Looking around the country, Long Beach figured that if aquariums had worked for other cities, one might work for theirs.

Six aquariums, not counting Long Beach’s, have opened across the nation in the 1990s, accompanied by major expansions of existing facilities in Boston and Monterey. Three others are in development.

“It’s definitely a trend, to use aquariums to revitalize downtown areas,” said Alison Wainwright, a spokeswoman for the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. “A lot of people are mimicking Baltimore and Monterey with their success in revitalizing those areas.”

The Monterey Bay Aquarium didn’t start as a tool for redevelopment, but it helped transform the once-declining Cannery Row area. The National Aquarium in Baltimore provided a similar stimulus, experts said.

Another winner was Chattanooga, Tenn.

“Downtown Chattanooga has been reborn,” said Kathie Fulgham, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee aquarium. She said the aquarium, which opened six years ago, helped attract $500 million in new investment.

But there have also been signs of strain, with aquariums in Camden, N.J., and Tampa, Fla., experiencing financial problems.

Attendance at aquariums nationally, after jumping from 23 million in 1989 to 37.7 million in 1996, slumped to 36.5 million in 1997, according to the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn.

The question of whether the market may be saturated is hanging over the industry, experts say. “A lot of people are looking at Long Beach and hoping and expecting it to do well,” said Ken Peterson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “But it does have some challenges.”

Already, there are two smaller aquariums in Southern California, the Cabrillo Aquarium in San Pedro and the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, as well as SeaWorld in San Diego. Santa Barbara is planning an aquarium, and another is being considered as an addition to the California Science Center in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park.

Add to that the competition posed by such local attractions as Disneyland, Magic Mountain and the Getty Center.

But Long Beach figures it got a big jump by being the first in the Greater Los Angeles area to build a major state-of-the-art aquarium.

And, aquarium officials say, all signs look favorable.

Jim Hancock, who spent 14 years in charge of marketing for Knott’s Berry Farm, said 20,000 charter memberships have already been sold, at prices ranging from $35 for individuals to $95 for families. He figures that number could reach 25,000. “We have so many requests, we can’t keep up with the volume,” he said.

The aquarium’s grand hall, with a replica of a blue whale hanging overhead, will be rented to private parties during evenings. Every Friday and Saturday night for the next year has been booked, for events ranging from charity fund-raisers to bar mitzvahs, Hancock said.

“If you open first, and you open with something really good,” rivals have something to think about, said Jim Gray, chairman of the nonprofit aquarium board of directors.

Gray, a longtime Long Beach banker, said he anticipated no problems in meeting the aquarium’s $23-million budget, including $8 million in annual debt payments.

“We are in good shape financially,” said Gray, interviewed in the aquarium’s gift shop. The aquarium opened at 10 a.m., and by 10:05 there was already a line in front of the cash registers.

“I made the first purchase,” said Diana Rummel excitedly, showing a signed cash register receipt for a commemorative coffee mug to prove it.