Marcus gives details on new Georgia Aquarium

By Walter Woods

Atlanta – The Georgia Aquarium will include a grand meeting space large enough for 12,000 to 14,000 people and will be designed for events during the city's biggest conventions, Bernie Marcus, the aquarium's patron, said Nov. 12.
Marcus also pledged that the $200 million aquarium his foundation is giving the city will be run as efficiently as possible after it opens in 2005. It will not be another burden on the city.
The Georgia Aquarium has also told its landlord, The Coca Cola Co., that it will probably expand the attraction at its site adjacent to Centennial Olympic Park after its first three years, officials said.
The aquarium will open next to a renewed Coca Cola museum, which will move from Underground Atlanta to the new site in 2005.
Marcus, founder of The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) and the aquarium's executive director, Jeffery Swanagan, met Tuesday morning with members of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau board and representatives from Central Atlanta Progress, Coca-Cola and Georgia State University.
Marcus told the board he wants the Georgia Aquarium to be an asset to the convention industry and an attraction that will bring families to the city on typically slow weekends.
The goal is creating jobs ... by getting people to sleep in our hotels and eat in our restaurants, Marcus said. Right now people don't pack their kids in the car and drive to Atlanta for a weekend ... But some day in the future a family from Michigan will fly down to this city because there are so many attractions.
The Georgia Aquarium will be among the largest such attractions in the world, with a 5 million gallon tank of exotic fish and aquatic wildlife.
For some comparison, the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has a 3 million gallon tank. The Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga has a 500,000 gallon tank, but it plans to add another 750,000 gallon exhibit by 2005, Swanagan said.
Marcus admitted Tuesday the logistics of managing an attraction the size of the Georgia Aquarium will be costly. The leafy sea dragon, a single animal that Marcus and Swanagan used as an example, will cost $600 each week to feed and maintain.
But Marcus pledged that the Georgia Aquarium would be run as a business-like non-profit with an independent board, and there should be enough revenue from its visitors to keep the attraction running day to day.
Marcus wouldn't give a range for the new aquarium's annual budget, but Swanagan said a comparable attraction with a research component, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., has an operating budget of about $26 million.
Both acknowledged that some aquariums, including Denver's, have not attracted visitors and have been financial disappointments.
But the Georgia Aquarium will have an edge because it will be debt free, Swanagan said. The Marcus Foundation is building the facility as a gift to the state and city.
Denver is struggling because of its debt, Swanagan said. It predicted 1.6 million visitors and it only got about 1 million. It's collapsing on itself. But we've learned from mistakes in the industry.