PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Victor Moffitt ran an underdog campaign for the Republican nomination for Rhode Island governor in 2010, garnering 30 percent of the vote to his opponent’s 70 percent in the primary. His signature proposal, to build a world-class aquarium as a way to spur the state’s economy, drew eye-rolls from opponents, one of whom called it a gimmick.
Since his loss, Moffitt has launched another quixotic quest: to make his dream of building an aquarium in the Ocean State a reality.
Moffitt has established the Oceans Aquarium Research & Science Center, known as the OARS Center, as a nonprofit group, assembled a volunteer staff with experience in fundraising, education and zoological institutions, and started looking for sites suitable to build a $100 million center. It will hold a golf tournament fundraiser on Wednesday at the Montaup Country Club in Portsmouth.
“It is a good economic development project, a tourism project, plus an educational project,” he said. “We’re ready to have the whole project take off now.”
Moffitt is a longtime tax accountant and investment adviser who is also a former three-term state representative from Coventry. He has no background in marine biology. His interest in aquariums was sparked a few years before his gubernatorial campaign, when he and his wife visited Atlanta’s Georgia Aquarium, the world’s largest. They thought a similar project would make sense for Rhode Island.
“We’re the Ocean State, we don’t have an aquarium. We don’t even have a science center in our state. Shame on us,” he said.
He envisions a two-phase project. The first, estimated to cost $75 million, includes building the 250,000-square-foot OARS Center, including educational facilities, research labs, a children’s learning center, an aquatics hospital and aquarium tanks, as well as a gift shop and cafe. Moffitt estimates it would host 1,000 people per day and create 250 new jobs in a state where unemployment is at 10.9 percent, second highest in the country.
The second phase includes a 100,000 square-foot exhibit space with a 2-million-gallon “Colossus” tank in the shape of a figure eight, estimated to add 50 more jobs.
He’s looking for a suitable location, preferably in the Warwick area close to Interstate 95 to make it easy for schoolchildren around the region to get there.
Moffitt says that while it is scaled back from his original proposal of an aquarium to rival Atlanta’s, his project would still be two to three times larger than aquariums in Boston and Mystic, Conn. His goal is to build the OARS Center by the end of 2014 and the Colossus tank by the end of 2016.
It’s an ambitious goal for a project that to date has only raised a few thousand dollars and has no firm commitments from anyone with deep pockets.
He expects to fund the project with private donations, although federal grants are also a possibility. Moffitt says he has gotten verbal commitments from some businesspeople in the area, but he won’t disclose them.
He said he knows he can’t depend on the state for any money, especially after its disastrous deal to back former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s now-defunct video game company with a $75 million state loan guarantee.
Stefanie Caliri, the project’s development director, acknowledged it is a challenge to raise money for a startup.
“You get into that Catch-22. You can’t build it until you have the funds, and you can’t raise the funds until you build a support system,” she said.
Those involved say they’d love for a generous donor to step in and give them a financial boost but acknowledge it’s probably not likely.
“Everyone I’ve talked to thinks it’s a valuable project. Not so many are willing to put their dollars to it,” said Timothy Maynard, education director of OARS and a retired deputy dean of students at the U.S. Naval War College. “We’re a grassroots organization trying to develop something that will help Rhode Island in not just jobs and the economy but also the future of our children.”
Moffitt says he sees it as his community service to give people in Rhode Island something to look forward to. He has assembled what he says is a one of the biggest collections of coral in the country, comprising more than 250 pieces, and has also purchased a 750-gallon tank for the aquarium.
“We’ve been putting in thousands of hours and thousands of dollars of our money,” he said. “As long as I’m breathing, this thing will continue.”
