The aquarium, proposed by Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and approved by the county legislature, is being built in the city's Inner Harbor. Credit: Laura Robertson | Central Current

When Democrats prepared to assume the role of the majority party in the Onondaga County Legislature, riding a historic blue wave of victories, the aquarium project stood out to legislators as one of the key issues constituents wanted action on.

Majority Leader Nodesia Hernandez received — and still receives — constituent emails about the $100 million aquarium project. The spending and the opportunity to use that money on other pressing issues has made the aquarium a flashpoint issue.

As votes came in on election night, showing a Democratic victory, Hernandez said that if the Democrats took the legislature, she would want to set a deadline for aquarium funding. If the money had not come in by then, she said: “Scrap it.”

But that’s no longer possible, Hernandez said. Democrats, including the caucus leadership, say it is too late to call off the project. She said the deadline would have been an “ideal policy” to set when the county executive came back to the legislature to ask for additional funding beyond the original $85 million. 

“There’s a feeling that because we have the majority, we can automatically stop the aquarium,” said Hernandez. 

In spite of public pushback, Democrats’ focus has now shifted to finding ways to ensure the entire county can benefit from the project, legislature Chair Nicole Watts and Hernandez said. The aquarium is scheduled to open this year. 

County Executive Ryan McMahon has told Watts the county has secured the funds to finish building the aquarium and fill it with water. 

“If the fight is just simply to stop it from being built, then yes, we’ve lost the fight. But I don’t think that’s the fight,” said Legislator Maurice Brown. Now, he said, the focus was on getting the project right. “That fight is still ongoing.” 

The county had already spent at least $40 million, Brown said. It would be a large cost to eat. He said that he could “see the good” in the aquarium project, but had his doubts about whether the county would achieve it. 

“Is it going to be a bunch of marginalized constituents looking up at a big, beautiful aquarium from their window?” Hernandez asked. “How is that aquarium going to break us out of poverty?”

Some Democrats, including Hernandez, have said that they plan to pivot to making sure everyone can benefit from the aquarium. 

Hernandez suggested discounted admission prices for low-income residents and free tickets offered to the Syracuse School District for field trips. Hernandez also advocated for more transparency throughout the building process, and to make sure that construction workers and eventual employees were both local and paid a living wage. 

Justin Sayles, a spokesperson for County Executive Ryan McMahon, said the county is working with school districts to provide access to the aquarium to kids throughout the community.

Sayles also said that the county was legally required to pay prevailing wage on municipal projects, and that ZoOceanarium Group, which will run the aquarium, has committed to hiring locally as much as possible. 

The Democratic caucus has not met formally to hammer out their exact plans and proposals for the aquarium, according to Brown, as their time has been focused on U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Brown said that while the aquarium was still one of the most common things he received emails about, ICE was fast catching up. 

The constituents he did receive emails from had a range of opinions about the aquarium. He said he had at least five emails laid out that the aquarium could be used to educate the community, and “significantly more” said the county needed to stop the project all the way. 

The aquarium was supposed to tell the history of Onondaga Lake, Brown said. “I do think it would be worth it to tell our stories, our histories. Democracy itself was founded here,” said Brown. 

Still, he had concerns that transparency about the exhibits would come “too late.” He said there had not been communication between the legislature and the county executive’s office about them. He was also afraid that exhibits would not open in time or that people would not want to come all the way from places like Philadelphia to visit the aquarium. 

“We can’t afford for that project to fail,” Brown said.

During Central Current’s pre-election Q&A conversations with nominees for the legislature, candidates were critical of the money spent on the aquarium. 

While on the campaign trail, then-candidate Ellen Block and Brown both expressed an interest in potentially repurposing the aquarium building for other uses. 

Brown said that he would still like to do a study on the structure to see if it could be repurposed. 

Justin Sayles, a spokesperson for the county executive, called repurposing the building an “unserious idea.”

Democrats say they would like to turn their focus to housing and transportation, an area where they’ve added a special committee at the legislature, which will include experts and community members in addition to lawmakers.

“While the aquarium money might already be spent and the decision already made, that doesn’t mean we now wash our hands,” said Watts. “There’s still absolutely work to be done regarding the aquarium or regarding affordable quality housing.”

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Laura Robertson is a staff reporter covering Onondaga County. Prior to joining Central Current, she lived on the edge of the Bering Strait in Nome, Alaska, where she worked as a reporter for a year. She...