Posted on: Sunday, July 13, 2003
Aquarium began Chattanooga turnaround
By Larry Copeland
USA Today
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Ten years ago, this city of 156,000 along the Georgia border was shaking off a reputation as a polluted town few people wanted to visit.
Today, a revitalized Chattanooga — and its downtown waterfront along the Tennessee River — has become a magnet for tourists from throughout the Southeast. Southern Living magazine readers recently named it their third favorite spot for a weekend visit with children — behind only Walt Disney World and Orlando.
The city's turnaround began in 1992 when the Tennessee Aquarium opened. "That was the beginning of a tremendous building of esteem and self-confidence in our community," Mayor Bob Corker says.
But many here are looking nervously toward Atlanta, the city of 4 million 118 miles to the south. Officials there recently broke ground on a grander aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium, donated by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, will be 12 times bigger than Chattanooga's.
This David-and-Goliath battle for tourists highlights a new reality for cities post-9-11. While many Americans remain reluctant to fly, the number of people visiting attractions within a few hours' drive of home is rising. After a slow spring, automobile travel is expected to increase 2 percent this summer over 2002. Cities are competing fiercely for this business.
Aquariums, which some call "the new zoos," are perhaps the hottest lure. No longer the exclusive province of coastal cities and river towns, they've popped up from Newport, Ky., to Denver and Duluth, Minn. Houston's aquarium opened in February, and aquariums in Jenks, Okla., and Dubuque, Iowa, on June 28.
More than a dozen other cities are planning aquariums.
On O'ahu, there would be two new aquariums built 25 miles apart if developers succeed with plans.
One, a 75,000-square-foot attraction proposed at Ko Olina Resort & Marina by Hawai'i developer Jeff Stone, recently obtained $75 million in state tax credits for construction.
The other, a 150,000-square-foot aquarium and marine research center that a subsidiary of Japan-based Kajima Corp. proposes developing for an estimated $120 million, is in negotiation for a lease on state-owned land in Kaka'ako.
Like the concern over competing aquariums in Tennessee, observers in Hawai'i wonder whether two similar tourist attractions can successfully coexist.
Capitalizing on America's fascination with fish is a popular strategy for cities hammered by a weak economy. The nation's 319 metropolitan areas lost more than 1 million jobs in 2001 and 2002, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The job losses and decreased business travel contributed to weak retail sales. That has left many cities struggling for tax revenue, making the battle for tourism dollars even keener.
"Regional tourism has become an absolute necessity for most metropolitan areas," says John Marks of the Travel Industry Association of America.
Some go belly up
The aquarium boom is part of an effort by cities to entice people to their central downtowns by creating entertainment zones. Once there, they spend money in restaurants and stores, says Don Borut, executive director of the National League of Cities.
Examples include Washington, D.C.'s MCI Center; a zone in Cleveland that includes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Browns Stadium and the Great Lakes Science Center; and Detroit's Stadium Center, encompassing Comerica Park, where the Tigers play baseball, and Ford Field, home of the pro football Lions.
"The idea is to create some kind of magnet that will generate other kinds of activity," Borut says. "An aquarium is not only attractive to kids, but also to parents."
Many cities have enjoyed success with an aquarium:
The National Aquarium in Baltimore helped revitalize the city's Inner Harbor. Last year, it drew 1.65 million visitors.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium, at the end of storied Cannery Row in Monterey, Calif., contains the largest population of marine life outside the ocean. It was a gift to the city from Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard.
New Orleans' Audubon Aquarium of the Americas is part of a complex that added new life to the foot of Canal Street on the Mississippi River.
But stunning failures have befallen some aquariums:
Duluth and the state of Minnesota built the Great Lakes Aquarium, the nation's only all-freshwater aquarium, for $33.8 million. After opening strong in 2000, it quickly faltered. By last year, it needed a $350,000 bailout from the city. It pays a private firm $13,500 a month to run it.
Colorado's Ocean Journey, a $100 million project on the edge of Denver's Lower Downtown, opened in 1999. It soon went under, lugging $62.5 million in debt. Landry's Restaurants, which owns the Houston aquarium, bought it in bankruptcy court last March for $13.6 million. The company plans to turn the property into an entertainment complex, including an aquarium.
Aquariums also have struggled in Tampa, Fla.; Camden, N.J.; San Francisco; Long Beach, Calif.; and Honolulu.
Attendance is down at many aquariums, which some attribute to the sour economy. Others say the nation is approaching an aquarium glut.
"A lot of cities said, 'If we build an aquarium, it will save us,' " says Jim Pattison, executive vice president of Ripley Entertainment, which owns aquariums in Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Myrtle Beach, S.C. "If we build it, they will come."
The result was the number of accredited aquariums grew more than 50 percent in the past 10 years — from 26 to 40. Over a similar period, the number of visitors to accredited aquariums grew just 23 percent — from 35.4 million to 43.7 million in 2001.
Unlike zoos, aquariums live or die on tourism. About 80 percent of visitors to zoos live in the zoo's home market and 20 percent are tourists, says Jane Ballentine, spokeswoman for The American Zoo and Aquarium Association. Aquarium visitors represent the opposite mix: 80 percent tourists and 20 percent residents.
High hopes in Atlanta
Atlanta has long been a top city for conventions and professional sports. The Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau says visitors spent $4.4 billion in the city in 2001.
But mirroring a national trend, convention attendance in Atlanta has fallen nearly 20 percent since 1999, from 3.6 million to 2.9 million in 2002.
So the city has high hopes for its gleaming, ark-shaped aquarium, opening in 2005. Planners expect 2 million visitors its first year.
The aquarium is "strategically important for Atlanta in terms of the development of downtown Atlanta as a people-friendly entertainment center," says Bill Howard, a vice president of the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau.
The Tennessee Aquarium, which draws a quarter of its 1 million annual visitors from Atlanta, isn't rolling over. It will more than double its size in 2005. How much impact the Georgia Aquarium will have on Chattanooga tourism is unclear. Most of the Tennessee aquarium's visitors live within a three-hour drive. "With Atlanta and Chattanooga being so close, that can be a potential head-butt situation," Ballentine says. "If I were Chattanooga, I would be scared," says John Morey, executive vice president of a marketing research firm for aquariums, zoos and museums.
Chattanooga has come far since 1969, when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite called it America's dirtiest city. The air was so gritty from industrial pollution that drivers used headlights in the daytime. The embarrassing designation prompted an initiative to burnish Chattanooga's image.
Tucked in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, Chattanooga has retained a small-town feel while adding hotels, restaurants and art galleries.
Atlanta's aquarium will contain 400,000 square feet of exhibits. It's near Centennial Olympic Park in a complex that also has a children's museum and World of Coca-Cola, an interactive attraction.
