Thirty years ago this week, lines of children dressed as bass, bluegill and other aquatic animals wiggled and giggled down Broad Street to the thrumming refrain of a marching band to mark the opening of the Tennessee Aquarium.
As thousands flocked to the downtown riverfront that day during the Festival of the Rivers, Chattanooga opened the world’s largest freshwater aquarium in a bold, if not audacious, attempt to help revive Chattanooga’s downtown.
The $45 million privately-funded riverfront attraction was projected to attract about 600,000 visitors a year to an area of town that had been in decline for years.
In its first year, the aquarium more than doubled that projection, drawing 1.5 million visitors to quickly emerge as the biggest tourism draw in a region long known for its Lookout Mountain attractions and historic battlefields. The aquarium’s initial success and subsequent expansions have spurred the addition of dozens of other downtown riverfront attractions, restaurants, hotels and housing developments over the past three decades.
As the aquarium prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary on Saturday with another all-day riverfront festival, a new economic study estimates it has pumped nearly $4.9 billion into Chattanooga’s economy since 1992, including $146 million of direct spending last year alone by out-of-town visitors lured to Chattanooga by the aquarium.