Nearly 10 years after the city pulled the plug on the Rio Nuevo aquarium, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is fulfilling a piece of that promise by building a $500,000 aquarium project.
Hoping to head off an attendance slump that coincided with the economic downturn, museum officials want to complete a gallery next fall that will focus on fish and invertebrates from the Gulf of California, widely known as the Sea of Cortez.
The project will start small, with 14 tanks and a "touch tank" where kids can feel a variety of swimming creatures.
But Craig Ivanyi, the museum's executive director, said this could serve as a test to see if a larger one might be appropriate at some point in the future - especially given the popularity aquariums generally hold and the fact that it was one of the original elements the Rio Nuevo project city voters passed in 1999.
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Quite aside from fish in the desert, there's another irony at play - the bad economy helped museum officials check off one of the original wish lists for the museum, with vision documents dating to the 1960s for a Gulf gallery. The funding never came through.
Now, with the economy in a quagmire and attendance off roughly 4 percent both this year and last, donors hope to help the museum build attendance. "With many organizations, both regionally and nationally, challenged at the gate, a number of foundations are trying to get more people to respond and come to the museum," Ivanyi said. The bulk of the funding will come from the Bert W. Martin Foundation, named for a Chicago philanthropist and with a focus on conservation and education.
The project will renovate the rooms adjacent to the gift shop. Ivanyi said it will feature strawlike garden eels that look somewhat like swaying sea grass, as well as sea horses. The touch tank will include a small species of ray. The other species for display are still being selected, with a focus on availability, sustainability and expense.
Ivanyi said while some visitors may have a hard time understanding the focus on fish in the desert, the Sonoran Desert habitat stretches all the way into Baja California. Plus, he said, the gulf affects this region's weather patterns.
The museum has fish currently in two locations. Four tanks with either freshwater fish or amphibians now in the room adjacent to the gift shop will be relocated to the reptile area to make way for the new exhibit. The fish at the beaver pond will stay put.
Ivanyi said museum attendance is heavily rooted in tourism, with as much as 75 percent of visitation coming from tourists. "We can't change the dynamics of tourism in Tucson, since there are a lot of external factors we don't have control over," Ivanyi conceded.
That's part of the reason the museum staff has stepped up its pursuit of local residents, in the early stages of a three-part market research survey.
A market research firm already sampled city residents, determining that 68 percent said they would be more likely to visit the museum if it had new exhibits or special events.
"You generally cannot stand still in this business," Ivanyi said. "As much as the museum has fabulous exhibits and programs, to engage new visitors there has to be something seen as new to promote more interest," he said.
The second part will survey museum members, while the third component will be a series of on-grounds surveys.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors will be asked to approve the project at its meeting Tuesday. Since the county is the lease-holder of the property, supervisors must approve any projects worth more than $100,000. Tom Moulton, who handles economic development issues for the county, said he's pleased to see the exhibit come to fruition, since he knows it's been on the radar for years.
The museum is among four big tourist draws, along with Old Tucson, Colossal Cave Mountain Park and the Pima Air & Space Museum. While the Reid Park Zoo is tops in attendance, much of that is driven locally, he said.
"Maybe the Desert Museum will have that opportunity now," Moulton said. "With these kinds of exhibits, it's absolutely possible that they could see a bump in attendance - and it could be that local attendance will come out because of the interest factor."
Did you know?
A Sonoran Sea aquarium was a cornerstone of the original Rio Nuevo plan pitched to voters in 1999. But it became the first major Rio Nuevo project axed in 2002. The voter-approved plan called for the aquarium to receive $10 million in Rio Nuevo funds. Top city officials pulled the plug when a financial analysis indicated it would probably need $16 million.
Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at rbodfield@azstarnet.com or 573-4243.
