To the Editor:
The aquarium debate has not had a serious investigation of the number of tourists claimed by its proponents. The Onondaga County Aquarium Feasibility Study proposed 245,000 tourists a year coming from five metro areas: New York City, Toronto, Buffalo, Montreal and Ottawa, which encompass 33 million people. The study’s glaring omission in defining these five tourist metro areas is that New York City and Toronto (80% of the 33 million people) have large and extremely popular aquariums themselves. The study did not give a rationale for why over 500 New York City and Toronto people a day would prefer to travel four or more hours to Syracuse when they have a larger aquarium in their own city.
In addition to ignoring the Toronto and New York City aquariums, the study failed to note aquariums in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Camden/Philadelphia and Quebec. The study ignored analyzing why the Montreal aquarium closed and failed to mention both a mall-based aquarium outside Albany and the Rochester aquarium being built. Ignorance might be bliss in certain circumstances; but not when $85 million to $100 million is on the line.
The study not only ignored our aquarium competitors; it made highly dubious assumptions about the local visitor attendance (50% of 490,000 total attendance) and pricing. The Rosamond Gifford Zoo at Burnet Park attracts up to 330,000 visitors. with adults paying $9 and children $5. The aquarium study recommends fees of $22 for adults and $16 for children, for projected 245,000 local visitors. The study fails to substantiate why such wildly optimistic projections are feasible. Similarly, aquarium supporters have not produced any reliable data on local attendance with fees double and triple the zoo’s fees.
Why did we pay $100,000 for this faulty study? Even more pressing, why are we betting $85 million to $100 million on it?
Paul Welch
Syracuse
Related: Democrats’ last-chance objections to Syracuse aquarium fail to change minds
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