People are asking why would we not want the Greensboro Performing Arts Center to be built in Downtown Greensboro? Well, for starters, we'll be competing directly with Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte which are all less than 1.5 hours away and a smaller PAC currently under construction in Martinsville only 45 minutes away.
And then there's the history of the Georgia Aquarium from which we are modeling our ideas: 3.6 Million visitors in it's first year, 13 Million visitors in it's first 5 years. From the Georgia Aquarium website:
"When the aquarium opened its doors on Nov. 23, 2005, it created a downtown leisure destination for residents and visitors like Atlanta has never seen before."
No PAC has ever pulled in numbers like those. Also:
"In 5 short years downtown Atlanta has also seen an explosion of new growth, from high-rise condominium towers and new shops to restaurants and gleaming new office towers... ...The Aquarium spurred an ongoing revitalization of an entire neighborhood immediately adjacent to the Aquarium, the Luckie Marietta District (LMD), which now offers a charming and walkable streetscape featuring restaurants, bars, shops, loft apartments and condominiums. This new activity has in turn given employers the confidence to invest in downtown..."
In other words, this is everything GPAC can only dream of being. And the best part? No other city in the area has an aquarium anything like what downtown aquarium proponents are talking about.
And unlike GPAC, this isn't being rammed down Greensboro's throats. This is in-fact a grassroots movement that started only yesterday and already has more public support than GPAC has garnered in almost an entire year. Greensboro citizens want this and are willing to support this.
Yes, it will be expensive but there are ways to keep costs under control. The first way is to leave the "non profits" out of the profit stream altogether. Parks and Rec or another City department can operate the aquarium just fine. The next cost saver is to design the aquarium so that it can be built in stages. This would allow revenue from earlier stages to go towards the construction of latter stages.
It's possible that we could combine the aquarium with plans for downtown college campuses and join with numerous State universities inside and outside of Greensboro to use the downtown aquarium as a research and development center thereby bringing in State and Federal funding. And who knows, maybe the reason none of the GPAC doners want their names made public really is because they're afraid we'll hate them for doing what they thought was a good deed? Well if that really is the case then a lot more businesses just might be willing to pitch in. Maybe even a lot of working class citizens would be willing to pitch in. After all, people are much more likely to pitch in when they think it's a good idea.
And of course we'll not let Matt Brown and the Coliseum Staff manage it because all Matt Brown knows about fish is how to stuff them in his face.
To support this effort and put an end to GPAC join Support The Downtown Greensboro Aquarium.
More info at GeorgiaAquarium.org.
PS. Maybe we could also have an IMAX theater inside like the Tennessee Aquarium.
