Keith Winsten, executive director of the Brevard Zoo, cleared a new hurdle last week as he seeks to press forward with a 26-acre aquarium project on the Banana River.
Capt. John Murray, director of Port Canaveral, on Dec. 5 unveiled to the Canaveral Port Authority’s five commissioners a non-binding letter of intent to lease the land to the zoo for at least 30 years.
“This gives Keith and his team the chance to start raising funds, drafting a development plan and getting suppliers,” Murray told his board.
The letter isn’t the lease, both groups said. But it describes the basic roles of the Port Authority, which owns the land, and the Brevard Zoo, which would be the tenant, once the parties hammer out the more detailed lease in the near future.
“The lease will tie everything together, and we hope to have that for a January meeting,” said Cole Oliver, chairman of the zoo’s board of directors.
Winsten calls the project the Indian River Lagoon Conservation Campus & Aquarium.
He has said the project will fill a niche left empty for an aquarium experience along I-95 through much of Florida. There are no aquariums along the highway from Miami to St. Augustine.
And other Florida aquariums don’t tell the Indian River Lagoon’s unique story, he has said.
Once a productive area for clammers and commercial fishermen, the lagoon has been polluted in recent years by excess nutrients and marred by algae blooms and fish kills.
Winsten cleared the first hurdle in September when the County Commission agreed to give the project a tourist development grant of $1.25 million, with an agreement for eight years of payments to total $10 million.
That money doesn’t come from property taxes, but rather from the county’s 5 percent tourist tax on stays at hotels, motels and other short-term rental properties.
According to the letter of intent, the aquarium and its parking area would occupy 14 acres of a 26-acre site on the Banana River. Other parcels would be part of a campus devoted to conservation education.
“It’s a win-win for everyone,” Port Commissioner Bob Harvey said. “Right now that land isn’t doing anything.”
In fact, Winsten has said the Port Authority is using it for storing marine equipment.
Among duties in the letter of intent:
• The Brevard Zoo would have contractors start the project in the fall of 2020 and finish two years later. Winsten has estimated the project to cost $70 million.
• Brevard Zoo officials will pay $250,000 a year in base rent, starting five years after the aquarium opens, but no later than Oct. 1, 2027. After that, the rent is then to increase by 2.5 percent a year.
• The zoo would lease the land for 30 years, with three options to extend the lease by 5 years, for 45 years in all. Each extension would require additional investment by the zoo.
• The zoo will pay a “use fee,” based on the number of guests paying admission. Figures run from no fee at all for the first 100,000 daily guests, up to $1 per guest if the aquarium attracts more than 500,000 guests a day.
• The Port Authority will provide up to $3.5 million worth of improvements to George King Boulevard and extensions of water and sewer utilities to the aquarium.
• Both the Brevard Zoo and the Port Authority would agree on restrictions on how other tenants could develop the 12 acres not occupied by the aquarium.
“That’s like if someone wanted to put up a gas station by the aquarium,” Murray said.
The letter of intent allows Winsten to seek $10 million from the state, $20 million from private or institutional philanthropy, and look to $30 million from financing and the aquarium’s own income.
Nobody took a vote on the letter of intent. But Port Authority Chairman Micah Loyd said the board would need to vote on the development plan and then the lease when they are unveiled.
