Loveland Living Planet public Aquarium Lighting by Orphek LED
The Loveland Living Planet Aquarium was founded in 1997 by Brent Andersen, a Utah native and marine biology graduate from the University of California Santa Barbara. It is a regional attraction with over 850,000 annual visitors. The initial plan was to build a
90,000 square feet (8,400 m2) aquarium that showed ecosystems from around the world. Locations for the aquarium were considered in Salt Lake County and Utah County, and feasibility studies indicated downtown Salt Lake City would be the best location.The first education component was launched in February 1999, when the Aquavan was outfitted with educational portable marine exhibits and began visiting Utah schools.
In 2004, in order to garner support for the full-size aquarium, the young organization opened a 10,000 sq ft exhibit at the Gateway Mall in downtown Salt Lake, offering an exclusive experience of marine and freshwater life that was not then available in Utah’s arid climate.
The Living Planet Aquarium Preview Exhibit featured freshwater fish, sharks, stingrays, eels, a coral reef, a giant octopus, a small theater, and other interactive exhibits. Attendance reached over 150,000 visitors per year the first two years, and the small space was quickly outgrown. The Aquarium relocated in June 2006 to a much larger 43,000 square feet (4,000 m2) space in Sandy, Utah. Attendance reached 460,000 visitors per year.
The long range plan to eventually construct a campus that would house an Aquarium and a Science Learning Center continued to get support from the community over the next 4 years and in 2010 several prominent members of the business community joined to lead the Board of Trustees including Ken Murdock, Jim Loveland, Tim Cosgrove, Jeff Flamm, Rick White, Ron Nielsen, Michele Hilton and Paul Hutchinson.
The Loveland Family Foundation had been a long time donor and in 2011 presented a lead gift that allowed the organization to accelerate fundraising, purchase 17 acres of land and raise $27 million to build the Aquarium’s permanent home in Draper, Utah.
The 136,000 square feet (12,600 m2) Loveland Living Planet Aquarium opened to the public on March 24, 2014 and saw over 1.1 million visitors in the first year of operation.The Aquarium is a 501(c)(3)non-profit organization.
