Greater Cleveland Aquarium A new aquarium for Cleveland

Ground will be broken next week on a $33 million, 1st phase of an aquarium based in the historic Powerhouse on the west bank of the Flats in Cleveland, Ohio, the Greater Cleveland Aquarium features 70,000 square feet of aquarium exhibits and related uses, including approximately 1,000,000 gallons of water.
The project will include a SeaTube, a pedestrian tube that allows visitors to walk through the middle of the aquarium.
Phase II is being designed at an estimated $40 million.
In addition to the main tropical walk-through tank, the Nautica Aquarium will feature special exhibits on the Great Lakes, Lake Erie, the Cuyahoga River, a fresh-water Asian exhibit and a Discover/Education exhibit.
The aquarium will be a U.S. first for Marinescape NZ Ltd.
The opening should be sometime in late 2011.

Cleveland: New aquarium groundbreaking scheduled

Project Summary - Greater Cleveland Aquarium, Cleveland Ohio

 

This project is a complete waste of time and money.The area it is being constructed known as the flats has been abandoned of business for quite some time.There is nothing there but abandoned buildings and a strip club.A gentleman named Russ Hill has been working for years to bring a real aquarium to the area behind Cleveland Browns Stadium which is right on Lake Erie and in the same vicinity as The Great Lakes Science Center and Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.He would like his aquarium to be much larger and similar to the Newport Aquarium in Kentucky.However Cleveland city politics are impossible to deal with.If you would like more info on this project log on to Rock Harbor Aquarium facebook and see what ya all think

Team Tapir

 

There are major problems currently going on at the Cleveland Powerhouse Aquarium Site.Workers are having issues engineering the tanks due to bad soil which the current building sits on.Developers are looking at either adding 6 months to the current timeline or a half a million dollars to the budget neither of which they want anything to do with.The majority of work on the project has come to a grinding halt.It has also come to our attention that due to the fact that the current building is a National Landmark no exterior alterations can be made.These recent developments only reiterate our opinion that it was a poor decision to build here.

Team Tapir

 

Despite several issues during its construction the Cleveland Aquarium is set to open to the public January 21 12.

Team Tapir

 

Here is their new website (the link posted earlier in this thread is no longer functioning).

Greater Cleveland Aquarium

 

And here is a news article about it. They claim it will generate millions of dollars a year for the local economy. I hope they are right. Other cities have built aquariums on the same premise only to find the city government subsidizing the losses (aquariums are so expensive to operate it is hard to turn a profit). My city of Tucson looked into it as part of our downtown revitalization project, but decided against it after studies showed it would be too costly to operate. (Off topic, but our downtown revitalization, voter approved over a decade ago, has been a complete shambles with the state finally taking over from the city due to mismanagement of funds. Vetoing the aquarium at the start of the project was probably one of the only things they did right.)

Greater Cleveland Aquarium will open doors in late January

 

Thanks for posting the link. I am eager to read a review from a fellow ZooChatter ("Team Tapir" duo?) by the end of January, but I realize that the aquarium will not be anything spectacular. Still, to have over 40 tanks and to be able to spend an hour and a half there (according to the website) is a major bonus for folks in Cleveland.

 

@Snowleopard Yes we absolutely intend to go to the grand opening and no doubt are going to include a review and pics.Hopefully it can surprise us a bit as we do not have very high expectations.

@Arizona Docent The aquarium is not the only new game in town as the city hopes to open its first casino in march.

Team Tapir

 

I (Marty) attended todays grandopening and I must say it exceeded my expectations.Bonnie was not able to make it today so no pics yet but we are gonna try to go again on Wenesday.The first couple of tanks feature Ohio game fish such as Largemouth Bass,Catfish,Emerald Shiner,Golden Shiner and Walleye.There are alot of cylinder tanks contaning species like Blacknose Dace,Longear Sun Fish and Orange Spotted sun fish,Bull Head Dollar Sun Fish,Darters,Tetra,Octpus,Goldfish.,Northern Studfish and Roundhead Goby.
There is a small freshwater Amazon River exhibit featuring a couple species of freshwater rays and some other small amazon fish.
Next is the worst alligator exhibit I have ever seen.Its very synthetic with no natural look to it at all.Its literally a tiny pool,a slab of concrete with some logs on top and some strings hanging from the ceiling.The exhibit houses 4 small female American Alligators.
One of the cooler features are that they built some tanks into several original brick tunnels which sorta resemble subway tunnels.
Next is a wall of exhibits of Lizards without any signage yet so I am not sure of the species followed by a nice sized tank for Black Grouper , Green Moray Eel and Bonnethead Shark.
The next room features a large touch tank where divers let visitors touch Starfish and Horseshoe crabs.
Next is the best exhibit at the aquarium a 250 thousand gallon shark tank featuring Sand Tigers,Nurse Sharks,Sand Bars and Blasck nose Sharks.The tank contains a shipwreck a cave and has a 149 foot tunnel running though its center which the longest of its kind in North America.

Overall this is not too bad a start for this facility and many staff informed me that their goal is to double in size by 2014.New exhbits could possibly include Sea Turtles,Penguins and even Dolphins.There is no more available space in the original powerhouse building so any planned expansion would be a additional free standing building.For anyone visiting Cleveland I would have to say its worth a look.

Team Tapir

 

Im surprised that you didn't mention harbor seals. ISIS lists that the greater cleveland aquarium has a male and female harbor seal. oh well maybe they be on display in the future. Dolphins would be awesome to see .

 

There were no Harbour Seals on display nor was there anywhere where one might think the coulld possibly be displayed at the moment.Perhaps something behind the scenes but surely we have our doubts about it.

Team Tapir

 

4 hours later and only getting kicked offline once, I finally have aquarium pics posted. Alot of the tanks have not settled yet. (Sand bottoms) You'll see in my photos, but I did my best. I tried to get every angle of the American Alligator exhibit that Marty detests. I am not quite as hateful of it as he is, due to the size of the alligators currently, and alot of the building shows through the decor. However the celing does make me laugh a little. (a 12 year old could accomplish that) I looked at the map when I was posting these and was just gonna post a link to the map on their site for you to follow along, however there is no map on the website, so I posted a picture of the map. The exterior of the building is on my phone, sorry, I used up my battery on my camera.

-Bonnie
Team Tapir

 

On Facebook today:

Greater Cleveland Aquarium
What’s going on with our shark tank?

First and foremost we confirm that the water quality of the Main Tank meets the needs for our animals, however the water clarity is not up to our standards. We are taking steps to rectify the situation and hope to increase the clarity on a daily basis.

That’s the beautiful thing about an aquarium, if you think about it: it changes and grows every time you visit. And we will achieve the clear visibility we demand of ourselves, and our guests should expect.

We are offering a 10% discount on admission until the Main Tank meets our expectations

Team Tapir