Crouse Health CEO Seth Kronenberg (left) and County Executive Ryan McMahon (right) announce a naming rights deal for the county's new aquarium. The aquarium is scheduled to open in fall 2026. Credit: Laura Robertson | Central Current

Standing on a pier over the Inner Harbor, County Executive Ryan McMahon and Crouse Health CEO Seth Kronenberg posed for a photo together. Behind them was the growing Onondaga Aquarium, painted to give an illusion of shimmering water. Between them was a missive from the future: an image of the completed aquarium as it will look when it opens next fall, now emblazoned with Crouse Health across its walls. 

In a $1.5 million deal, Crouse has bought the naming rights for the aquarium. The new facility will now go by the Crouse Health Harborview Aquarium. It got the Harborview name as part of a competition among Onondaga County elementary school students last spring. 

McMahon and Kronenberg both said that the partnership represented a shared belief in the importance of community health inside and outside of hospitals. 

“I don’t think we could have had a better partner than Crouse Health,” said McMahon, adding that the county had been “very cautious” about which institutions it had approached to offer naming rights. “Sure, you want to get revenue to help offset operating risk, but at the same time, we’re not going to sell out our values to a large player.” 

Kronenberg declined to say when Crouse had been approached for the opportunity and when it had signed on, but said that the partnership had been a “natural fit.” 

Partnering with the aquarium provides an opportunity to “meet the community where they’re experiencing life outside the hospital,” Kronenberg said. Crouse would be able to provide education on subjects like health and wellness, women’s health, maternal and neonatal issues in a facility he called beautiful. 

Kronenberg said he was still determining what Crouse’s educational programming at the aquarium might look like. 

“Our mission and the county’s mission for this project seems perfect for what we’re trying to accomplish,” Kronenberg said. 

The county is pursuing additional sponsorships from local and national partners to name individual tanks and exhibits. 

The aquarium project has been under construction for about two years. 

When it opens, it will have more than 200 species, including otters, sharks, jellyfish and octopi. There will be freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems represented inside. 

The project is expected to have an operating cost of around $12 million per year, McMahon said. It is likely to bring in significantly more revenue in its first few years, and then settle around $13 to $14 million after that. Additional revenue will likely go into a capital account to mitigate future risk, said McMahon. If there turned out to be a lot of money sitting in that account, the county could in the future have conversations about whether some of it should be reappropriated elsewhere. 

Tickets are expected to cost around $25 for an adult, said McMahon. That’s about half the cost of comparable aquariums in places like Boston and Baltimore, he said. If parking costs anything, it will be severely discounted, he said. The aquarium will begin to sell memberships in the next week or two, McMahon said. 

After a delay in getting supplies shipped from Italy to Syracuse this summer, the facility is now scheduled to open sometime this fall. 

“We’re in the red zone,” said McMahon. “We’re marching to score and we’re gonna score.”

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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...