Close-up views, million-dollar debuts: Several new aquariums are poised to make a splash.
By Kevin Moffett

Downtown Aquarium
Houston, Texas
Opened February 18

Ocean Journey Aquarium
Denver, Colo.
Purchased March 4

As incongruous as it might at first seem for a restauranteur to own and operate an aquarium (kind of like McDonald’s opening a petting zoo), Landry’s Restaurants Inc. recently jumped headfirst into the aquarium business. Its first, the Downtown Aquarium in Houston, Texas, opened in mid-February; a little over a month later, Landry’s purchased the Ocean Journey Aquarium in Denver, Colo., the rights to which it outbid its competitor, Ripley Entertainment. All told, the Houston-based corporation has spent more than $50 million in this two-aquarium foray, with more than $15 million in improvements on Ocean Journey still looming, a move that immediately positions it near the top of the aquarium food chain.

The Downtown Aquarium opened to the public on President’s Day, after an invitation-only event with fireworks and a lot of limousines and celebrity waving. The $38 million, six-acre aquarium includes two restaurants, 40 tanks totaling a half-million gallons of water, seven themed marine areas, and, unlike any aquarium before it, a midway as well as hard rides, including a Ferris wheel, an “aquatic carousel,” and a train built by C.P Huntington that motors through Downtown Aquarium’s shark tank. With a striking city location in Houston’s theater district, expectations are high for this new facility.


At the Auction

On March 4, Landry’s president and CEO Tilman J. Fertitta outbid Bob Masterson of Ripley Entertainment in a Denver bankruptcy court hearing for Ocean Journey. Ripley had originally put in a $4.5 million bid, which was raised $100,000 at the hearing by Landry’s, which was in turn raised $100,000 by Ripley Entertainment, which was in turn raised . . . and on and on. The bidding finally closed at $13.6 million, with Landry’s claiming the deed to the four-year-old aquarium.

Formerly a nonprofit entity, Ocean Journey is roughly twice the size ofthe Downtown Aquarium. It cost $93 million to build in 1999, a year in which it attracted one million visitors. Last year, the aquarium filed for Chapter 11, claiming a $62.5 million debt. Currently, more than 500 species are housed in the one-million-gallon, three-story attraction.

“With Landry’s recent development—and successful opening—of Houston’s first aquarium, we’re enthusiastic and confident the Landry’s organization can increase sales and revenue and make Ocean Journey one of Colorado’s premier destinations,” says Robert F. Hill, chairman of Ocean Journey.

Landry’s intends to renovate Ocean Journey much like the Downtown Aquarium, with an aquarium restaurant on the ground floor and possibly a Marina Matinee Café as well. There are also plans to add rides. The aquarium is close to Six Flags Elitch Gardens, not a competitive worry for either facility in the past; the two are diverse enough to attract different groups, but with Landry’s penchant for multi-use attractions, it’s a concern that might arise when Ocean Journey expands.

Landry’s, a publicly traded company, bills itself as “the largest and fastest growing casual dining full-service restaurant and entertainment chains,” a pretty specific category, no doubt. The company owns and operates more than 280 restaurants, including the Chart House, the Rainforest Café, and the 30-acre Kemah Boardwalk, one of the models the company used for the Downtown Aquarium.

L’Oceanografic Valencia
Valencia, Spain
Opened February 15

L’Oceanografic Valencia in southeastern Spain, billed as Europe’s largest aquarium, opened to sold-out attendance in February. The aquarium is part of Valencia’s Ciudad de Las Artes y Las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences), a complex of architecturally daring buildings in the city’s revitalized river district. L’Oceanografic is actually seven different facilities, each housing a distinct marine habitat, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, with seasonal exhibits as well. The aquarium, like the Ciudad’s science museum, planetarium, and botanicalgarden, was built by the municipal government, which intends to add an opera house next year. The aquarium is operated by the Parques Reunidos Group, Madrid.

L’Oceanografic’s particulars: 45,000 fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals, 500 species in all; 11 million gallons of water. What else? A large restaurant, Submarino, with a clear-wall display of swimming fish haunting you while you gnaw on their deceased and batter-fried brethren.

Some of the more notable exhibits at L’Oceanografic are a wetlands aviary with mangroves, water birds, and fish; an Arctic igloo with an aurora borealis light show on its roof; the largest dolphinarium in the world, where guests can listen on headphones to the underwater sounds of dolphins and beluga whales; an underwater auditorium; and a “petting” area.

There is a research center onsite, where marine biologists monitor and breed endangered aquatic species.

The aquarium is expected to attract more than 1.5 million visitors a year.

Tennessee Aquarium
Chattanooga, Tenn.
Expansion scheduled to open
May 1, 2005

Last September, the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga unveiled plans for a 60,000-square-foot $30 million expansion, including a heavy renovation of its Gulf of Mexico exhibit. The new saltwater habitat will be nearly eight times as large as the current one and looks to present a more seamless view of the open ocean.

“Imagine gazing into a watery world and gaping at 10-foot-long sharks, barracudas, and a mosaic of colorful reef fish,” says Jackson Andrews, director of husbandry and operations at the Tennessee Aquarium. “Seen from various vantage points on several levels, the Gulf tank will be surrounded by smaller galleries that may feature unusual creatures like cuttlefish, squid, and jellyfish.”

The sea floor of the new saltwater exhibit will mimic the underwater Flower Garden at the National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico, says Andrews, a place where one-of-a-kind coral formations once attracted reef divers to Florida from all over the world. Still a premier diving destination, the Gulf’s Flower Garden is home to tropical fish, manta rays, turtles, and sharks.
According to Charlie Arant, the president of the Tennessee Aquarium, “It was our visitors who helped us decide what form the expansion would take. Through extensive surveying, we discovered that visitors wanted to see saltwater exhibits that are as compelling as our existing freshwater exhibits. They also told us they wanted more animal encounters.”

Built in 1992 on the banks ofthe Tennessee River in downtown Chattanooga, the Tennessee Aquarium is the first and largest freshwater aquarium in the world. Its exhibitry follows the Tennessee River’s source in the Appalachian high country all the way to the Mississippi Delta at the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. Since opening, the aquarium has drawn, on average, a million visitors each year to its beautiful 12-story-high facility, which includes an IMAX 3D theater, the only one in the Chattanooga area.

Groundbreaking on the proposed expansion will begin this summer, with a scheduled May 1, 2005, grand opening. In addition to the expanded Gulf exhibit and revamped galleries, the growth will allow room for other exhibits to be added in the future. Of the $30 million cost, $10 million was raised through a bond issue and $20 million through combined fund-raising efforts with the Twenty-First Century Waterfront, a group undertaking the renaissance of Chattanooga’s riverfront.

“The new building is more than an expansion—bigger isn’t necessarily better,” says Arant. “The expansion results from a desire to provide a world-class aquarium experience for our visitors.”

Oklahoma Aquarium
Jenks, Okla.
Opens May 31

More than 19 years in the making, the Oklahoma Aquarium is the culmination of the persistence of P.R. Ramey and Doug Kemper, two friends who first envisioned the project while snowbound in Wyoming. Odd maybe, but not out of step in designing a landlocked aquarium. They formed the Oklahoma Aquarium Foundation, raising $12 million of the $20 million cost of the museum, the rest in AAA revenue bonds, according to Susan Bramsch, CEO of the Oklahoma Aquarium.

“The foundation was started by business leaders in the Tulsa community who wanted to bring an aquarium to Oklahoma,” says Bramsch. “They spent several years working out the plan, several years raising funds, and then broke ground on the current site in 2000, starting construction about a year later.”

As of this printing, many of the aquarium’s fish are off-site in a quarantine building, where they’ve been for the past two years, waiting for a May 31 grand opening. The aquarium is housed in a 72,000-square-foot building on 66 acres in Jenks, Okla., across the Arkansas river from Tulsa.

According to Bramsch, the aquarium’s mission is “conservation through education.

“We want to give the children of Oklahoma and the Midwest a chance to see animals they wouldn’t normally get a chance to see,” she says. “Strangely enough, there are a lot of people in this area who never make it to the coast. Especially these days, some people are hesitant to go too far away from home.”

One of the themes of the Oklahoma Aquarium is “Following a Drop of Water,” tracking the different aquatic environments from Leadville, Colo., where the Arkansas River begins, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Any water creature that you would encounter along the way, including in the Gulf of Mexico itself, will be on display at the Oklahoma Aquarium.

The aquarium will also exhibit some of the largest sharks in captivity, eight of them, with the largest at nine-and-a-half feet long and weighing 400 pounds. The aquarium also boasts the largest shark tank, about 480,000 gallons of water. They will be visable from above a seamless dome, which Bramsch likens to “having a living room in the middle of a large aquarium, totally surrounded by water.”

The aquarium, which anticipates about 500,000 folks a year, is being envisioned as another link on the growing chain of tourist offerings in Tulsa, which now includes the Tulsa Zoo, the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, and the Gilcrease Museum. Bramsch says that the foundation will continue to raise money for new exhibits and additions, including an auditorium and hotel sites. There is also hope of eventually attracting a planetarium to Tulsa.

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium
Okinawa, Japan
Opened November 1, 2002

Last year, Okinawa, Japan, attracted a record 4.8 million tourists to its city. Partly responsible for this was the addition of the Churaumi (“beautiful ocean”) Aquarium, the largest aquarium in Japan and second largest in the world. It is contained in the municipal Ocean Expo Park in downtown Okinawa and was added to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of Okinawa’s return to Japan after 27 years of U.S. military rule. One of many state-run aquariums in Japan, Churaumi features one of the world’s largest shark tanks, holding 7,500 tons of water, three whale sharks, a manta ray, and 650 different kinds of marine life indigenous to the seas near the Okinawa islands. In addition to an extensive display of coral reefs, the aquarium houses turtles, dolphins, and manatees.
The new aquarium was constructed by the state at a cost of about 17 billion yen (close to $150 million) and features the largest panorama window in the world, a floor-to-ceiling six-inch-thick acrylic wonder. It is billed as the first tank with enough depth for the public to watch the natural feeding habits of these giant whale sharks. Churaumi also includes a café.