In what is becoming an annual rite marking midwinter, the nonprofit, private Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth has asked the city for a $300,000 operating subsidy to help it survive.

Along with the Feb. 28 petition was a separate one-time request for $150,000 to help pay for a salt water exhibit, ironically called “The Abyss.” Aquarium manager Ripley Entertainment wants to bring the exhibit from another of its facilities to Duluth for a two-year stay.

Earlier in the month, city councilors also agreed to raise the aquarium’s credit line from $250,000 to $400,000 to help it get through its winter cash slump. Aquarium representatives blamed an attendance dip last summer that was part of an overall decline in tourist traffic during 2004, the first tourism downturn since the late 1980s.

True, paid attendance dipped 2 percent last year to 116,000. But the financial dilemma for the aquarium and city goes far deeper.

A clear pattern has emerged since the $34 million aquarium opened in the summer of 2000. A project built upon big civic egos, inflated attendance projections and mostly with public dollars has become an albatross for taxpayers.

Its private sector visionaries sold a project with a far larger break-even point, about 300,000 in paid attendance. Here’s how it happened.

A core group of the city’s business elite — several in the tourism sector — began planning the project in 1988. They convinced the Minnesota Legislature to issue $16.6 million in bonds, and the city’s Economic Development Authority to provide an additional $6.5 million in loans. With private fundraising efforts falling short and the project underway, they convinced the city council in 1998 to assume responsibility for any future operating shortfalls. That possibility was so unlikely, they said, that several even offered their personal guarantees for some of the debt to get the project built.

Like cockroaches scattering when the kitchen lights come on, they disappeared as their dream was ambushed by reality. But the sucker punch they landed on that 1998 council has put a city with little spare change in a must-pay situation with no end in sight. The state likely would view a default as a betrayal and jeopardize future state bonding assistance.

What to do? There’s a role here for all.

First, those civic leaders who helped produce the aquarium quagmire should step forward to lead in the cleanup and pay up. Even a modest contribution would be a powerful act of leadership.

They have a ready example in Daniel Russell, executive director of the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. He’s the guy who’s agreed to pay a $1,000 fine from personal funds for violations of the city’s smoking ordinance by delegates during a Jan. 13-14 convention at the DECC.

He declined an offer from his board of directors to pay the fine, and possibly could have beaten the charges because he signed the contract with the group in April 2000, before the city’s smoking ban was enacted.

He may not appreciate it, but Russell has sent the community a powerful message of personal responsibility and action. And here’s where the rest of us also will be part of the ultimate solution, as taxpayers and as potential visitors if some of those original aquarium backers are ready to lead by example.

There are 50,000 households in Duluth, all with a clear choice that will help determine whether this asset survives as a unique institution, or goes the way of some adaptive re-use with lower costs, perhaps operating as a municipal water park. Effectively led, the public can make a powerful difference in the aquarium’s future, getting past the baggage of this unique asset, and supporting it.

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