I have been working on my website this evening and thought you might enjoy the slide show I posted there. The slideshow is of a family trip to Belle Aquarium in Detroit, Michigan just before it closed forever last year. The aquarium was 100 years old. I remember visiting there when I was a kid and so I wanted to make sure my nephews saw the aquarium too. The "not so beloved" Mayor closed the aquarium as part of his budget cuts. Now he is after the Detroit Zoo.

http://www.pandk.org/Trip%20to%20Belle%20I...%20Michigan.pdf

Too bad it shut down. :(

I wonder where all those tanks and fish went too.

They shipped the fish around the country to other aquariums. They lost one in transit to Colorado though. He was an Alligator Gar named Hal and he had been at the aquarium since 1982. It happened to be my newphew's favorite of all the fish in the aquarium http://belleisleaquarium.com/media/2005/ch4/ch4_052605.html

I came across someone else's slideshow that has some higher quality pics:
http://homepage.mac.com/artpayne/PhotoAlbum8.html

As for the tanks, they were all built in and I'm guessing they are still in place. I have not heard of any renovations on the building.

Looked like a very cool aquarium. I liked the type of fish that they kept. The kind you can actually 'sensibly' keep in a home aquarium. Shame that mayor shut it down. What a disappointment to the community I'm sure.

This makes me MAD! Here they just spent a fortune shipping those fish to other aquariums, and even killed one, for what? Budget cuts?!? I guarantee you they spent more on shipping than they spend over the course of a year running the entire operation. Not only that, but had they decided to charge for tickets instead, they could have easily made a profit off of it, while still providing a low-cost educational facility for the community.

If you don't mind, and you have the mayor's information (email address, or name and city/state so we can look it up), I think I'd like to have a few words with him.

EDIT: Nevermind, I could have looked at the name... it's in Detroit... and it also looks like they are probably going to re-open it: Website

Looks like the citizens told them in no uncertain terms... It also looks like it's a historic landmark that even the mayor would be powerless to tear down, even if he wanted to.

Wow! That place is nice! I don't see why they would close it!

This article mentions the vote, but also states that it was non-binding. I had to look up what that actually means. As you might think, it is just a vote to determine sentiment or the what the people want.... not that the vote will change anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Isle_Aquarium

Well, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is after the city zoo, city worker pay and benefits, etc. He already limited city bus service at night. These types of changes always seem to affect the people who need it most. I think I heard something about the art museaum too. Sure it costs something to run these venues, but apparently the cost is more than the revenue coming in from them. I see the article above has some numbers.

Here is the contact information from the City of Detroit web site, but with an 88% vote for keeping the aquarium open, I guess the only thing you could ensure is an opportunity to speak your mind.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick
City of Detroit
Executive Office
Coleman A. Young Municipal Center
2 Woodward Ave., Ste. 1126
Detroit, MI 48226

(313) 224-3400

I agree. I was shocked by the size of the giant Gourami. I believe that was the 2nd and 3rd pictures in the set.

All that for a $230 million dollar deficit? Unbelievable! How about he agrees to sell the mayors mansion? Let's see how well that one flies. $230 mil is a drop in the bucket for a city that size... it's hardly anything. If he would concentrate on getting more jobs, there wouldn't be a deficit anyway, and you need bus service and museums and aquariums, etc. to attract jobs... the good news is, you can make money from museums and aquariums if managed properly.

I agree 100%. I don't think his wife really needs that Navigator she's driving around in, or him with his expensive suits and dinners. I think they should at least shut down part of the mansion. I would respect him more if he ate some of his own dog food, wore casual clothes and drove a Chevy and I think his peers in other cities would too.

I agree, with all the porkbarrel, there's plenty of places to cut without any negative impacts to the community, and sometimes with benefitial impacts... there's also ways to increase the budget without raising taxes... but they would rather shut everything down so you're willing to pay higher taxes to get them back up and running.