CAPE CANAVERAL — Port Canaveral commissioners are scheduled to vote Wednesday on a revised ground lease for the Bowen Aquarium, the last major piece of port paperwork the project’s backers have said they need before a planned December groundbreaking.
The Canaveral Port Authority Board of Commissioners meets at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23, in the Commission Room at 445 Challenger Road, Cape Canaveral. The lease is Item 2.A on the agenda. It asks the board to approve revisions to the ground lease with the East Coast Zoological Society of Florida, the nonprofit that operates Brevard Zoo, and to authorize staff to deliver the lease, subject to review by the port’s general counsel.
The port and the zoological society signed a development agreement on Oct. 6, 2021, for an aquarium and conservation campus dedicated to the Indian River Lagoon, on about 14 acres along the Banana River. That agreement included a form lease the board approved at the time. According to the staff memo, the society asked for changes because of delays against the original timeline and because its capital funding has firmed up since then. Port staff reviewed the revisions and wrote that they do “not find them to be substantial in nature compared to the form lease previously approved by the Board.”
Two changes are spelled out in the memo. First, rent can start later: the outside date for base rent to begin moves from January 2029 to January 2033, which staff say reflects schedule extensions the board has already approved. Second, the port reserves an overpass easement. A new lease section lets the port build, operate and maintain an extension of George King Boulevard west and a State Road 528 overpass across part of the leased land. In return, the port agrees to work with the society to limit noise, light and visual impacts, to work in good faith to add parking to offset any spaces the overpass takes, and to mitigate costs the society incurs because of it.
The staff memo and the lease draft in the agenda packet list the terms. The tenant is the East Coast Zoological Society of Florida. The site is about 14 acres on the Banana River. The term is 31 years, with three five-year renewal options, for an aquarium and conservation campus. Base rent is $250,000 a year, or $20,833.33 a month, rising 2.5 percent annually, and it starts on the fifth anniversary of the aquarium’s public opening or Jan. 1, 2033, whichever comes first.
There is also a per-ticket payment, starting on the second anniversary of opening and based on the prior year’s paid admissions: nothing up to 100,000 visitors, 50 cents per admission from 100,001 to 400,000, 75 cents from 400,001 to 500,000, and $1 above 500,000. The lease’s own table puts that at $50,000 to $200,000 a year in the second tier, $300,000 to $375,000 in the third, and $500,000 or more in the top tier. The memo lists the item’s financial impact to the port as “No.”
The society has announced a Dec. 2 groundbreaking for the roughly $140 million aquarium, named for donors John and Pat Bowen. Those figures come from the society and earlier news coverage, not from the port’s lease documents. As 321 Daily reported Aug. 20, society board chair Milo Zonka told commissioners at their Aug. 19 meeting that the lease needed to be finished by Sept. 23 to keep financing and the groundbreaking on schedule, and Commissioner Carol Craig called the September target ambitious.
A yes vote Wednesday does not finish the paperwork. The staff memo says further revisions to the development agreement, along with a separate access easement, are expected to come to the board as early as next month. The commission’s next meeting is Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 9 a.m. The meeting is open to the public, and the agenda, the staff memo, the lease and a redline showing every change are posted on the port’s meeting portal.
This story will be updated after the vote.