Aquarium for city's I-4, C-2 property?

No one imagined an exhibit on harbor seals or the feeding habits of monkfish at the long-vacant Rogers Street lot known as I-4,C-2 a few months ago, when the chain link fence was still up and a tangle of weedy trees pushed out toward the sidewalk.

Now that's exactly the future Ward 1 City Councilor Paul McGeary sees for the property — a prestigious waterfront marine aquarium and research center creating jobs, tourist dollars and vitality in the heart of Gloucester's downtown working waterfront.

It's the first serious proposal floated for I-4,C-2 since the city seized the 2-acre parcel for $1.5 million earlier this year in an effort to build something on a location long-considered a black hole for civic initiative and commerce.

"This has the potential to serve the three basic needs in the city Harbor Plan," McGeary said of the aquarium plan: "Helping the fishing industry, building 21st-century maritime jobs and serving the visitor-based economy.

"It seems to me that the creation of an aquarium and research institute serves all those things hand in hand," McGeary said.

McGeary admits that making the Gloucester aquarium a reality won't be easy. Nothing on the waterfront is.

While he may be the first one in line with an idea for I-4, C-2, McGeary is certain to face competition and proposals that could be less expensive to build or bring greater direct financial returns.

Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who sprang for I-4,C-2, with the idea of eventually returning it to a productive, tax-bearing state, is also expected to roll out a plan for soliciting formal development proposals for the lot later this week.

Neither the mayor nor Community Development Director Sarah Garcia would comment on the aquarium idea or hint at what the proposal bidding process will look like.

The hurdles for an aquarium at I-4,C-2 are both financial and legal.

Benefactor needed?

A primary inspiration for McGeary's Gloucester aquarium is the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, which includes a sizable research arm and has become probably the most influential aquarium in the country.

But the Monterey Bay Aquarium was built by gifts from Hewlett Packard cofounder and computer tycoon David Packard. A nonprofit, Monterey Bay is still supported by donations and a substantial endowment.

In fact, most modern aquariums are nonprofits, and few meet expenses solely from visitors. The colossal Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta was built with a $250 million gift from the cofounder of Home Depot.

So far, McGeary does not have a deep-pocketed benefactor, but is keeping his eyes open for one.

Another example McGeary cites of a successful research aquarium, one closer to the scale of what may be possible here, is the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, which has been hailed for revitalizing that downtown.

To make a Gloucester aquarium feasible, McGeary acknowledges that sealife and research alone will likely not pay the bills and a public-private partnership that leveraging non-aquarium commercial opportunities either on the site or nearby may be necessary.

Conference center

In his tentative outline, McGeary includes a conference center in the aquarium building and suggests linking it by elevated walkway to a hotel on the other side of Rogers Street. Possible locations for the hotel include the former Empire building and the Gloucester police station, which has been targeted for replacement by the city.

The legal hurdles to an aquarium at I-4,C-2 are familiar: the property sits within Gloucester's state-regulated Designated Port Area, which is designed to preserve marine industrial harbor infrastructure.

Even if the aquarium pumps seawater from the harbor into its fish tanks, the state will not consider it a water-dependent marine industrial use, or a primary use in the DPA. This was illustrated in Cape Ann Brewery's plan to make beer out of desalinated harbor water to get around DPA rules at the former Doyon's property, which the state did not entertain.

As a result, like the brewery, McGeary's I-4,C-2 aquarium only covers half of the property in order to take advantage of the new state-sanctioned provision in the Gloucester Harbor Plan allowing up to 50 percent of DPA parcels to be filled by "supporting uses."

Supporting uses, which cannot be residential, must contribute economically to the maintenance of marine industrial infrastructure and the water-dependent use or make some form of contribution toward them.

Although the state gave the green light for Cape Ann Brewery to move to the old Doyons site despite not including a new marine industrial use, many believe an entirely new building would not have been approved.

"An aquarium is not water dependent industrial," Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Ed Coletta said Friday. "They would have to analyze the detriments to the DPA and come up with any regulatory substitutions."

City visitor center

The broad outline McGeary has sketched out over the past few months places the aquarium on the east side of the lot closest to the Building Center and includes a Gloucester visitor center at the northeast corner.

A rough schematic calls for a three-story building with a roof level and underground parking. A central fish tank would run vertically through the center of the building like an atrium.

Don't expect killer whales jumping through hoops, trained sea lions or other SeaWorld fare, McGeary says. The aquarium should focus on education and the marine ecosystems of the Gulf of Maine and Stellwagen Bank.

As for why an aquarium on I-4,C-2 and not something else, McGeary sticks to its synergy with the Harbor Plan and describes a facility that could provide Gloucester with a link to the elusive, high-tech marine jobs people have been talking about for a generation.

"If we are to broaden our economic base to include marine biology, marine technology, biotech and oceanography, we will need a core educational and scientific institution to drive the development," McGeary writes in an aquarium outline.

Economic benefits

And while the appeal of an aquarium conference center to the local tourist industry is obvious, the benefit of the facility to the fishing industry, the third leg of the Harbor Plan economy, may be a tougher sell.

There is no commercial fishing industry left in Monterey. Canary Row near the aquarium there is now a mini-mall of boutiques and tchotchke merchants while the aquarium itself is often viewed as an environmental enemy of commercial fishing.

McGeary says it doesn't have to be that way.

The aquarium research center could operate on the cooperative model of fisheries science, employing local fishermen to help provide a more accurate picture of fish stocks in the Gulf of Maine than the numbers now coming out of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"Fishermen and scientists would work together to assess the health of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem," he said.

As he waits for the mayor to unveil her plan for I-4,C-2, McGeary said he's looking to create a working group to further explore the project, conduct a feasibility study, create a dedicated nonprofit and approach developers, business leaders and potential educational research partners.

"Reaction has been uniformly positive," McGeary said Friday about the early reaction to the aquarium idea. "There is some concern that it is an expensive proposition, but most people see the value of that kind of facility."

He added: "This has the potential to serve all of the harbor development needs that keep coming up. Positive, but not Pollyanish."

Patrick Anderson can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3455, or panderson@gloucestertimes.com.

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