The Seattle Aquarium’s new $160 million Ocean Pavilion will open on August 29th.
The 50,000-square-foot exhibit space has already transformed the city’s downtown waterfront and will feature the region’s largest tropical coral reef ecosystem, including sharks, rays and other animals and plants.
The expansion is the aquarium’s most ambitious and expensive undertaking since it opened in the 1990s. 45 years ago Inside the wooden building at Pier 59.
“After more than 20 years of planning, it’s incredible to see this vision come to fruition,” Seattle Aquarium President and CEO Bob Davidson said in announcing the pavilion’s opening day on Tuesday.
The new exhibit focuses on Indonesia’s vulnerable region of the South Pacific. Coral TriangleAccording to the announcement, visitors will come face to face with 3,500 species of animals and plants, including sharks, rays, anthias, schooling fish, seahorses, mangroves and about 30 species of coral.
Integrated into the city’s elevated walkway, scheduled to open in the fall, the building’s roof will be a public plaza overlooking Elliott Bay and Mount Rainier. At ground level, passersby can peer through circular windows into a 325,000-gallon coral canyon teeming with thousands of fish and invertebrates.
Owned by the city of Seattle and run by the nonprofit Seattle Aquarium Association, the aquarium attracts 850,000 visitors annually.
The $160 million expansion is expected to increase annual visitor numbers to 1.2 million.
The project will be the first to be completed as part of a larger redevelopment of Seattle’s downtown waterfront made possible by the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct in 2019. The cost of the redevelopment is estimated at $1.2 billion. Over $800 millionIt would be paid for by the city, state, private donors and a special tax levied on downtown property owners through “local improvement districts.”
Former Seattle Times reporter Sandy Doughton contributed to this report.
