SYRACUSE — Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon says the Inner Harbor aquarium is set for completion in mid-2026.

“This facility will be open in less than a year. The exterior of the facility will be likely completed at the end of this year and then the interior [work] will begin,” McMahon said in remarks at an event on Aug. 13.

A spokesman for McMahon says C&S Engineers is the designer of record. The firm’s primary consultants are St. Louis, Missouri–based PGAV Destinations, which focused on aquarium concepts, exhibits, graphics, patron experience; Seattle, Washington–based MLA Engineering, which focused on aquatic concrete; Penfield, N.Y. –based Popli Design Group, which has an office in Syracuse and focused on the mechanical engineering component; TJP Engineering of Bend, Oregon, which focused on life-support systems; CME Associates, Inc. of DeWitt, which provided insight on the project’s geotechnical component.

“The aquarium, outside of telling [about] the cleanup [of] and the story of Onondaga Lake; the fresh-water story of New York State; and then certainly the saltwater exhibits that will really help attract people from all over New York and all over the Northeast and arguably the country, offers a unique opportunity for the arts and cultural industry,” McMahon said.

He was speaking at an event at Studio Central Post at 201 S. West St. in Syracuse announcing incentives for the future aquarium as a location for filmmakers.

It’s a $100 million project that still needs $6 million in fundraising, and McMahon told reporters he’s “extremely confident” that raising the funding “won’t be an issue.”

“We have commitments that are starting to come in, and we have naming-rights deals that are in the end stages of negotiations. And we have other economic partnerships that we’ll be announcing,” McMahon said. “We have little concern about filling the remainder of the $6 million … We’ll raise more than the $6 million and we’ll likely put some of that away to implement some of our educational programming.”

Film incentive

Any kind of film work that is conducted at the upcoming Inner Harbor aquarium will qualify for the Onondaga County local PRIMED tax credit.

PRIMED is short for the Onondaga County Production Rebate Incentives for Movies and Entertainment Development, per the website of CNY Arts. PRIMED is an incentive-based rebate program designed to support television, commercial advertising campaigns, and feature-film productions in Onondaga County.

PRIMED offers a 25-30 percent rebate, up to $300,000, on all qualified local expenditures in Onondaga County, CNY Arts said.

“Since 2021, PRIMED has generated over 100,000 labor hours for local crew,” Alexander Korman, executive director of CNY Arts, said in his remarks at the Aug. 13 event. “PRIMED has also generated over $8 million in direct economic impact right here in Onondaga County and adjacent sectors like hospitality, lodging, transportation.”

McMahon said Onondaga County also plans to work with Visit Syracuse and Eric Vinal, VP of film, TV & entertainment at Visit Syracuse, to get the upcoming aquarium, once complete, registered for the New York State film tax credits.

“We will work with our team at ZoOceanarium, who will be running the facility, in offering discounted rates to use the facility for production of film,” McMahon said.

Film production could be handled by companies such as American High, a local film-production studio, or even the nonprofit sector, such as WCNY, Syracuse University, and Le Moyne College.

The county executive made the Aug. 13 announcement at Studio Central Post at 201 S. West St. in Syracuse, noting that the county is “really excited about this.”

He went on to say that the aquarium will be open in less than a year. The facility’s exterior will be likely completed at the end of this year and then crews will begin the interior work.

“But we have amazing partners here that will be using this much more than people just coming in and seeing the exotic marine life that are there,” McMahon said.

Besides McMahon and Vinal, those attending the announcement included Danny Liedka, president and CEO of Visit Syracuse; Jeremy Garelick, founder and CEO of American High; Monte Young, co-founder and managing partner of Studio Central Post; Franklin Fry, executive director of Red House Arts Center; Alex Corman, executive director of CNY Arts; and Onondaga County Legislator Shawn Fiato.

Project history

The Onondaga County Legislature narrowly approved the project in a 9-8 vote during its meeting of Aug. 2, 2022. Like the legislators who voted against it, some segments of the community believed county officials could’ve spent that money on other matters, such as poverty in the Syracuse area.

But in the end the project was approved, following 10 months of debate about it after McMahon first announced the aquarium initiative in early October 2021.

The aquarium project is an expansion of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, McMahon told local reporters following the county legislature’s vote. The project idea came from the Friends of the Zoo, he said. McMahon credited zoo officials, such as former executive director Ted Fox and his team, for their work in giving county officials “the confidence to undertake this [project].”

The county executive called the aquarium project a “tourism year-round asset … that we can sell.”

The aquarium project will also provide “unique opportunities” for the county to partner with its higher-education institutions and research, McMahon contends.

“It will provide great opportunities to tell one of the greatest stories we’ve had in our community with the cleanup of Onondaga Lake and its tributaries and work in the history of this lake and what it’s meant to our community and how for the first time in a generation what is happening around it as it becomes the epicenter for recreational and leisure activity once again,” he said.