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DEL.ICIO.US‘World-class attraction’ spotlights Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bernie will be there. So will the mayor and the governor. And Wolfgang Puck is serving lunch.
The Georgia Aquarium opens its doors to the world’s media today, trying to make a very good first impression on more than 250 media representatives from more than 100 newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television networks.
“We want to show this is a destination for international visitors,” said aquarium spokeswoman Donna Fleishman. “This is a world-class attraction that should be on visitors’ must-see lists when they come to the United States.”
The media tour comes at a critical time in Atlanta’s ongoing effort to reinvent itself.
The world’s largest aquarium, which opens to the public next week, arrives just a month after nearby Atlantic Station’s retail outlets opened and on the heels of a major expansion by the High Museum of Art. The World of Coca-Cola museum opens next door to the aquarium in 2007.
“It’s an incredible moment for the city in many ways,” said Jackson Kelly, president of Brand Atlanta Inc. “This is a defining time for the region. It will create a leisure market for Georgians and visitors like Atlanta has never seen before.”
Brand Atlanta is a public-private marketing initiative that has raised $8 million in cash and in-kind donations to promote the city. Jackson said the aquarium opening, coupled with the other recent venue expansions, represents the biggest boost for downtown since the 1996 Summer Olympics.
That will translate into job creation and will redefine downtown as a major tourist destination, he predicted. “We think the aquarium will help every other attraction in Atlanta,” Jackson said.
Located at the north end of Centennial Olympic Park, the $280 million Georgia Aquarium has been promoting itself to the locals for several months.
The big fish tank has more than 100,000 fish swimming in more than 8 million gallons of water.
It displays everything from sea otters to whale sharks, the biggest fish on the planet. It is the only aquarium outside Asia to display the gentle, plankton-eating sharks, which can grow to the size of a Greyhound bus.
Today’s festivities are aimed at a worldwide audience, and Fleishman said reporters from Japan, Korea, Mexico and Latin America have signed up for the tour.
“Two of our employees will be providing interviews in Spanish for the audiences in Mexico and Latin America,” she said.
Reporters will get a tour of the just-completed 500,000-square-foot facility, listen to speeches by Mayor Shirley Franklin and Gov. Sonny Perdue and have lunch prepared by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, whose company oversees catering for the aquarium’s massive ballroom. Selections from the aquarium’s Cafe Aquaria will also be provided.
The tour kicks off a week of intensive media scrutiny for the aquarium and downtown Atlanta.
On Monday, when the aquarium opens to annual pass-holders, NBC’s “Today” show will broadcast from the big fish tank.
The show reaches about 6 million U.S. viewers every day and up to 11 million viewers overseas. Two days later, when the aquarium opens to general-admission ticket holders, CNN will use live feeds from the festivities.
Fleishman said aquarium officials realize they have a very narrow window to get their message out to a very large audience. This is their 15 minutes of fame.
“The most difficult thing for us is trying to get them to grasp all of this in a limited time frame,” she said. “But this is what we’ve been building up to.”
Fleishman said aquarium benefactor and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus has been inundated with interview requests as the opening nears.
Marcus is spending more than $200 million of his fortune to build the aquarium as a “thank you” to the people of Georgia, where he began his home-improvement empire.
“Bernie call me this morning and said, ‘Where do you need me? Where do you want me?’ He goes from 76 to 6 years old when he starts talking about the aquarium. If everyone else gets as excited as he is, we’ve succeeded,” Fleishman said.
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