Albany

Mayor Jerry Jennings told Omni Development that if the firm wants to study the possibility of a downtown aquarium idea the firm has been pushing, Omni should pay for it.

Now, Omni is.

The company announced Wednesday that it has hired Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm ConsultEcon to study the feasibility of the idea, which it formally proposed in June after years of informal, back-channel discussion.

ConsultEcon has worked on aquarium projects worldwide, including Egypt, Angola, Australia, Ireland and Italy. Domestically, the firm has worked on aquariums in Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Charleston, Chattanooga, Portland, Maine, and Camden, N.J.

"Everybody's busy doing other things, and the mayor has his eye on the convention center at the moment," Omni President I. David Swawite said of the reason his company has taken the initiative. "I think we've waited way too long to focus on transformational projects that are going to be very positive for the city and for the region."

Omni is pushing for an aquarium built on land off Broadway that was supposed to be the site of the city's new downtown convention center, which will now likely be built elsewhere, if at all. That land is adjacent to property Omni owns that had been envisioned as part of the convention center footprint.

Yet Jennings and convention center officials have been openly skeptical, or worse, of Omni's proposal.

Albany Convention Center Authority Chairman Gavin Donohue called it "a terrible idea and is unsupportable under any basic economic development theories."

Swawite, meanwhile, has billed the aquarium as a potentially transformative idea for downtown, drawing parallels to the rebound of downtown Chattanooga, Tenn., alongside its successful aquarium.

One of the criticisms leveled at the idea, however, has been that Omni proposed the plan for land it does not own and without a formal analysis of how much it would cost or whether the market could support it.

But Swawite said he's confident ConsultEcon's review, which will focus on the off-Broadway site, will answer many of those critiques.

"Some of those comments are unwarranted, and I think people are making statements not knowing really all of the facts," Swawite said, declining to reveal how much his firm is spending on the study. "I think it's going to show the market potential, and knowing the market potential you're able to determine what the sizing of the aquarium should be."

Sarah Reginelli, director of economic development for the Capitalize Albany Corp., the city's economic development arm, welcomed Omni's study as a piece of a larger planning effort being undertaken by the city and businesses to shape the future of downtown, which has been increasingly marketed as a residential area.

"From our perspective, it comes at a good time that they're doing the in-depth work that they'll be doing on that potential project," Reginelli said, adding that the downtown tactical plan now getting underway will include a look at the convention center site.

That study will take between nine and 12 months and will try, among other things, to zero in on the best use for that land, she said.

"That is just one option for that site," Reginelli said. "It's a huge opportunity, and we want to make sure that we're making the best of it. ... It's not often that you have that much developable real estate in an urban core."

A 1997 study for the Downtown Albany Business Improvement District pitched the idea of a $20 million to $30 million aquarium on the city's waterfront.

Since Omni went public with its idea, the convention center authority has — for unrelated reasons — publicly begun studying building a scaled-down facility on a different site close to the Capitol off Eagle and Howard streets, which would free the roughly four acres eyed by Omni for other development. But convention center officials have said it's premature to discuss the future of that land.

The first phase of the new study's results are expected to be complete by the end of the September.

jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com • 518-454-5445 • @JCEvangelist_TU