On August 23, 2010, a representative from Guinness World Records in London arrived at the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta to do something that everyone already knew but no one had made official: certify it as the largest aquarium in the world. Alistair Richards presented the certificate to aquarium President David Kimmel, formalizing a distinction the facility had held since opening day in November 2005.
The numbers were not close. The Georgia Aquarium held more than 8 million gallons of water across its exhibits — a volume that dwarfed every other aquarium on the planet. The Ocean Voyager tank alone contained 6 million gallons, large enough to house whale sharks, manta rays, and thousands of other marine species in an environment that approximated open ocean conditions. A new dolphin exhibit, scheduled to open that fall, would add another 2 million gallons.
How It Got Built
The Georgia Aquarium exists because of one person's money and vision. Bernie Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, donated $250 million to build the facility — at the time, the largest single charitable gift in Georgia history. Marcus chose the Centennial Olympic Park district in downtown Atlanta for the site, placing the aquarium adjacent to the World of Coca-Cola and within walking distance of the CNN Center, the Georgia World Congress Center, and the park itself.
The aquarium opened on November 23, 2005, and immediately became the anchor attraction of the Centennial Olympic Park district. In its first year, more than 3.6 million people visited — a number that established it as one of the most-visited aquariums in the world and validated Marcus's bet that a world-class marine facility could transform downtown Atlanta's tourism economy.
What the Record Meant for Downtown
The Guinness certification was ceremonial — the aquarium had been the world's largest since the day it opened. But the formal recognition reinforced the Georgia Aquarium's role as a global destination, not just a local attraction. International visitors planning trips to the American South could point to a Guinness World Record as a reason to include Atlanta on their itinerary.
For the Centennial Olympic Park district, the aquarium completed a cluster of attractions — alongside the World of Coca-Cola, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights (which would open in 2014), and the park itself — that made the area one of the densest tourism districts in the southeastern United States. The district that the 1996 Olympics had created finally had the year-round draw that its planners had envisioned.
The Georgia Aquarium has since been surpassed in total volume by facilities in Asia, but in 2010, the Guinness certificate confirmed what downtown Atlanta already knew: Bernie Marcus had built something that no other city in the Western Hemisphere could match.
Original reporting by Georgia Public Broadcasting, August 23, 2010.
