5/30/2023 0 Comments Mote marine aquariumLast October, Mote reported it had reached the $90 million milestone, with another announcement planned this fall. Michael Moore, Mote special advisor to the office of the president, is leading the charge to raise the $110 million required by the county to kick in the last $20 million. Such an ambitious project requires a successful capital campaign. You don’t want to make a building where you can’t roll sharks down a hallway.” We are going to have to move all these animals into the building and then load them in. It's made for some of the engineering challenges because we’ll have manatees up on the third floor, so it's going to be a very strong building. “The building is three stories, which is kind of unique for aquariums. “Some of the first work that you'll see after the pilings will be the big tanks - the Gulf of Mexico tank and some of the other ones - and the building gets built around those. “You’re kind of almost building the building from inside out,” Bebak said. We’ve ordered those already, so we knew that there was some stuff that was going to take some time.”Īs opposed to developing an office or other commercial building, the Mote SEA will have massive tanks and marine life exhibits on each of its three levels. There are some some very long lead items like the big acrylic windows that take time. "We've been working on that for a while, even pre-ordering things where we could,” he said. Now with the property under its ownership, Mote has submitted for final permit review with the county.īebak said he expects construction to go as scheduled, having gotten ahead of supply chain issues by pre-ordering materials, some of them unique to building an aquarium. The county conveyed the property to Mote for a symbolic price of $100. The nearly 12 acres just a few hundred yards from Interstate 75 was previously donated to Sarasota County by Benderson Development - developer of UTC Town Center - for use as a park. (Courtesy of Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium) “We're looking at opening in 2024.”Īn exhibit of manatees will be located on the top floor of the three-story Mote SEA, requiring extraordinary construction methods. “We are on schedule to start the piling work, which is really the first phase of the vertical work, in mid-August,” Bebak said. A portion of the parking lot is already open to public use for the adjacent park, the rest reserved for construction staging.Ĭonstruction, said Mote Vice President Dan Bebak, should start within weeks. The site is largely cleared and the parking lot essentially completed. The county previously had committed the last $20 million - revenue from tourist taxes - toward the development costs. And as of October 2021, Mote had raised $90 million toward its capital campaign goal of $110 million for the $130 million facility. A 2018 omnibus agreement with the county allowed Mote to begin developing the site in preparation for vertical construction. Not that there was much doubt the Mote SEA would be built. With last week’s sale of 11.76 acres near Nathan Benderson Park by Sarasota County to the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, things are getting real. Until last week, the Mote Science Education Aquarium has been a dream in the making for about four years.
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