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DEL.ICIO.USHow Atlanta landed the big one
It began on a flight over the Atlantic Ocean
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Swanagan and Bruce Carlson stood on a vacant lot a few years back and watched as the morning sun dawned over the Atlanta skyline.
Five hours from the nearest ocean, the aquarium experts were on the hunt for the perfect place to put the nation’s largest indoor coral reef and the hundreds of brilliantly colored critters it would support.
“We had to know not only how the sun came over the site, but the precise effect of the skyscrapers on the sunlight,” explained Swanagan, who knew that a giant skylight was needed in order for the coral exhibit’s delicate organisms to survive.
Three years later, that carefully placed coral exhibit is being readied to welcome visitors to the Georgia Aquarium — the planet’s biggest fish tank — which will open its doors to annual pass holders Monday morning.
The 500,000-square-foot facility holds 8 million gallons of water in its tanks and more than 100,000 animals, including whale sharks, the biggest fish on Earth. It’s the only aquarium outside Asia to display the gentle plankton eaters, which can grow to the size of a Greyhound bus.
The aquarium, a huge ship-shaped structure that looms at the northern end of Centennial Olympic Park, began life as the vague vision of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, 76, a wisecracking billionaire disdainful of governmental interference and not afraid of big ideas. Before it was completed, the project would consume $290 million, most of it from Marcus’ own bank account.
Swanagan, the aquarium’s executive director, and Carlson, vice president of education, conservation and exhibits, were recruited early to lead a staff that would eventually number 220 full-time and 120 part-time employees, who will run the aquarium along with hundreds of local volunteers.
Civic boosters predict that the aquarium will attract more than 2 million visitors a year. They hope it will spark a downtown revival not seen since the 1996 Olympic Games.
The aquarium opens just a month after the retail outlets of nearby Atlantic Station and on the heels of a major expansion of the High Museum of Art. The World of Coca-Cola museum will open next to the aquarium in 2007, and Atlanta is still in the running to snag the NASCAR hall of fame, which would be located nearby.
“All of this creates a critical mass for downtown that will move us to a new level of tourism,” Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said. “You add that to the sports venues we have, and it’s clear there is a new energy in the city. It brings jobs; it brings business.”
A study by Georgia State University professor Bruce Seaman predicted that the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coca-Cola will boost the state’s economy by nearly $200 million a year, pump an additional $255 million into state and local tax coffers over 15 years, and create as many as 3,300 jobs throughout Georgia. The study was commissioned by Coca-Cola and Marcus.
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The high hopes began high over the Atlantic Ocean more than four years ago, with a man who never owned a home aquarium and never considered putting a koi pond in his back yard.
Marcus, returning from Israel, asked then-Gov. Roy Barnes, who was on a trade mission, to join him for the ride home in his private jet. Marcus told Barnes that he wanted to do something large and lasting for Georgia. He wanted to pay back the city and state whose people made his first Home Depot stores a success in the late 1970s, back in the days when success was anything but a given.
“All of the blessings in my life are because of the people of Georgia,” Marcus said.
By the third hour of conversation, Marcus, a Republican, had begun to talk to Barnes, a Democrat, about fish.
“I really began to talk myself into an aquarium,” said Marcus, who had often visited aquariums to unwind during his Home Depot travels. “I began to realize how inclusive aquariums are to everyone, rich or poor, black or white. Age means nothing. Little kids love it; older people love it.”
By the time the wheels of the Falcon 900 touched U.S. soil, Marcus had already doodled his initial thoughts on a piece of scrap paper. The Georgia Aquarium was about to take flight.
“I realized early on we were going to do something unique and special,” Marcus said. “I wanted something that would last generations.”
The final product is the work of many people, but Marcus’ imprint can be seen all over it. The aquarium’s one-of-a-kind “Learning Loop” came about because Marcus was nearly trampled by unruly schoolchildren at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium dedicates 25 percent of its space to a separate educational path through the facility that will be seen only by the 70,000 students and their teachers expected to visit annually.
Look down while you’re walking through the galleries and you’ll see another Marcus innovation. Most public aquariums have concrete floors. Marcus carpeted the floors of key galleries.
“I was thinking about people my age,” he said. “I wanted to make the floors more conducive for a longer experience.”
From the beginning, Marcus tried to minimize government intervention in the project. He set up the aquarium as a nonprofit institution under the Marcus Foundation, an arrangement that would give him maximum control and shield most of its records from public scrutiny. He eventually plans to turn the big fish tank over to a nonprofit board.
“I want to build it, and I don’t want to have to worry about bureaucracy and policy,” Marcus said during an interview while the facility was under construction. “It’s my money, and I want to do what I want to do with it.”
He aggressively tried to cloak the aquarium’s scale and its specific exhibits in secrecy. That approach sprang from his Home Depot days. Marcus had a saying: “Don’t advertise the hammer until the hammer is on the shelf.” His approach to the Georgia Aquarium has been much the same.
Contractors, aquarium employees, academics — everyone who came into contact with the aquarium — were obligated to sign nondisclosure agreements. The whole project was dubbed “the Cone of Silence” by the largely fraternal international aquarium community.
By November 2001, Swanagan — who had pulled the Florida Aquarium in Tampa out of a financial tailspin — was on Marcus’ payroll. The two — sometimes with Marcus’ wife, Billi, in tow — began a frenzied tour of the world’s best aquariums. Over the next 18 months, they visited more than 50 fish tanks in more than a dozen countries.
One eye-popping tour to visit seven Japanese aquariums in six days would have a profound impact on how visitors will experience the Georgia Aquarium. The dual wall tanks of fish, called “blue runners,” that guide visitors into the aquarium’s atrium are based on a small exhibit they saw during that trip.
And it was in Japan that Marcus first looked into the face of the planet’s biggest fish. “When Bernie saw the whale sharks, you knew there was no turning back,” Swanagan recalled.
Some scientists, and even the Japanese, who have kept whale sharks in a few of their aquariums for more than a decade, tried to dissuade Marcus from bringing the world’s largest fish to a landlocked city at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. Their doubts only seemed to encourage the man who had overcome legions of naysayers to build the world’s biggest hardware stores.
“All the experts said, you can’t do it,” Marcus recalled with more than a little glee when the aquarium’s two whale sharks, Ralph and Norton, arrived in Atlanta. “I just love that — when they tell you that you can’t do it.”
Once the decision was made to display whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, much of the remainder of the facility began to fall into place. These massive fish needed a massive habitat, one unlike any fish tank ever constructed.
The result was a 6.2 million-gallon tank that is the focus of the Ocean Voyager gallery — one that visitors will view through one of the biggest aquarium windows on Earth. Made of a special acrylic, the tank’s window is 2 feet thick.
“When I started interviewing aquarium people, they all came to me with the same thing: ‘We’re going to open this nice little aquarium. It’s going to be cute, something similar to Chattanooga.’ I said, ‘You don’t understand what I’m trying to do here. I want something extraordinary,’ ” Marcus recalled.
Gary Fowler, principal designer at the Atlanta-based architectural firm of Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates, said that by the time his firm took over designing the aquarium, the coral tank and the whale shark tank — code-named “Ralph” — were driving the project.
Fowler said he sent Carlson a design for the coral reef exhibit with four options for the critical skylight over what is now known as the Tropical Diver gallery.
“Each design option had a video that traced the sun through that space for the summer and the winter,” Fowler said.
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Marcus, whom Forbes last year listed as No. 106 on their tally of the wealthiest Americans, had outlined early on what he was willing to spend.
“I sat down with our financial people at one point, and I said, ‘We’re either going to do it or not do it,’ ” Marcus said. “And I picked a number, and I said, ‘The number is going to be $200 million. That’s what I’m going to spend,’ knowing I would spend more. But I had to have a number to start with to have some discipline.”
Fowler said keeping the costs in line became a major challenge.
“They [Marcus and Swanagan] had seen every aquarium in the world, and they would say, ‘I want one of those and I want one of those, and I want one of those,’ ” he said. “You start adding them up and it’s always a challenge to meet budget.”
It became obvious the $200 million figure would be shattered if all five galleries envisioned for the aquarium were to become a reality.
Marcus announced Saturday that before it was over, he had lightened his bank account by $250 million.
“It’s like Billi shopping,” Marcus told about reporters at a media preview Saturday. “There’s no bottom to it.”
Still more money was needed, and Marcus turned to some of Georgia’s marquee companies to complete the aquarium.
“I reached a point where I said, this is it, I’m not spending more than this,” Marcus said. “And the only way to pay for it was to get sponsors to help us finish this thing.”
Home Depot, Georgia-Pacific, Southern Company, AirTran and SunTrust Banks were recruited as “presenting sponsors,” spending an estimated $7.5 million each to sponsor a gallery.
BellSouth stepped up to sponsor the theater and Turner Broadcasting System paid $4 million to sponsor the one-of-a-kind Learning Loop set up for the 70,000 schoolchildren expected to visit each year.
And there were other major infusions of money and services Marcus is not counting in the total cost.
The state agreed to forgo taxes on construction materials. Coca-Cola gave the aquarium the 9-acre construction site. United Parcel Service kicked in a $1 million in-kind contribution to transport creatures like the whale sharks from Taiwan and beluga whales from Mexico.
Improvements to Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard, the roadway connecting the aquarium to the interstate, cost about $13.3 million. The state provided nearly $7 million, the city $1 million, Central Atlanta Progress about $1 million through its self-taxing program. Landowners provided more than $4 million worth of rights of way.
The important thing, Marcus said, is that the aquarium will open debt-free.
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While the aquarium has been widely applauded, there have been some bumps along the road to its opening day.
Some have complained that, unlike other public fish tanks, the Georgia Aquarium does not offer an all-encompassing annual family membership, making it too expensive for large families.
Under the Georgia Aquarium’s price plan, annual passes for a family of four would cost about $205. The much smaller Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga charges $85 for a yearly family membership.
Some homeless advocates took issue with Marcus when he became involved in a high-profile fight for an Atlanta ordinance banning aggressive panhandling in downtown Atlanta, a frequent complaint of tourists visiting the city.
“People are not going to come down here and eat dinner if they are afraid to get in their cars,” Marcus said at the time.
The Atlanta City Council eventually passed the ordinance 12-3 after a raucous meeting at which some homeless advocates shouted down council members.
And a few animal rights groups have opposed the aquarium’s plan to display whale sharks and belugas.
Some groups argue that no wild animals should be on display, while others object specifically to large oceangoing creatures like whale sharks and belugas’ being confined.
Marcus has dismissed most of the criticism with a wave of his hand.
Once the public experiences the aquarium, he said, the complaints will go silent.
“I want people to walk in and be happy when they walk in,” he said. “And I want them to be overjoyed when they walk out.”
Comments
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By MIIKE GILES
November 21, 2005 01:05 PM | Link to this
BERNIE, GOD BLESS YOU. YOU TOOK THE DOG BY THE EARS AND MADE THIS THING WORK. IT’S PEOPLE LIKE YOU (AND ARTHUR) AND COMPANIES LIKE COKE, HOME DEPOT & TBS THAT HAVE MADE THIS TOWN GREAT AND CONTINUE TO KEEP IT GROWING. I MOVED TO B’HAM 1 YR AGO FOR BUSINESS REASONS, I WISH I WERE BACK (AND WILL BE).
MIKE GILES
By Kurt
November 23, 2005 12:11 PM | Link to this
We need more people such as Mr. Marcus. A gutsy guy. My family will certainly visit the aquarium as well as the High Museum.
By Laura S.
November 23, 2005 04:43 PM | Link to this
WOW! EXTRAORDINARY! YOU DID IT! Mr. Marcus, we applaud you. Thank you for bringing the world to Atlanta.
By michael davis
November 25, 2005 05:12 PM | Link to this
I visited the Aquarium the first day it opened. What an asset to downtown. Too bad other business leaders in Atlanta don’t have the same for-sight for the rest of downtown. I think it would be great if something like the Atlantic Station was developed around Underground. Underground in its present condition;is such a waste of real-estate.
By Kim F.
November 29, 2005 04:25 PM | Link to this
I am happy to hear that this new addition to the downtown area has arrived. I was an Atlanta resident for 10 years and now back home in Detroit. When I came back to visit friends I always made a stop in Chatanooga for their aquarium. I look forward to coming back soon to see this wonderful new addition to the ATL.