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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/751527
40 BCBUSINESS DECEMBER/JANUARY 2017 COURTESY OCEANOGRAFIC first decade. But several years in, there were legal battles between the manage- ment and the City of Arts and Sciences involving breach-of-contract allegations. Then, the City decided that they wanted Oceanogràfic to be more than a tourist trap—they wanted it to promote ocean research and conservation. Eduardo Nogués Meléndez is a former chief of engineering at the City of Valencia who worked on the devel- opment of the science museum and the aquarium. When the city announced that it would be requesting proposals to manage Oceanogràfic, he and several others decided they would find partners and submit a tender. In July 2012, he and a colleague visited about a dozen large aquariums across North America. They were looking for a partner with experi- ence in managing a large portfolio of animals—Oceanogràfic has fishes, mam- mals, dolphins, whales, reptiles and other mammals. Vancouver Aquarium had all those, and something else. "We were not looking for the biggest; we were looking for the smartest," said Meléndez, on a break between lectures at the International Aquarium Conference hosted by the Vancouver Aquarium in Sep- tember. "When we finished the tour, we said, 'If they want, we want.' Because they had a very clear orien- tation to mission while being on the other side very smart, efficient managers." Meléndez and his col- leagues approached the Van- couver Aquarium with their proposal. They would be joint partners in the bid for a contract to manage all the operations of Oceanogràfic. "We told them, 'We're not in a position to put up any cash, because any extra cash goes into our programs,'" says Nightingale, "'and we're not in a position to take risk.'" The Aquarium, in the middle of its own $100-million physi- cal expansion (which includes infrastruc- ture updates, a new entrance pavilion and more spacious galleries) saw this partnership as a unique opportunity to grow its mission beyond its walls. The Vancouver Aquarium agreed to contribute its man- agement expertise, with COO Clint Wright and Dolf DeJong spending significant periods of time in Valencia; the other partners would be Ket Gestión, a manage- ment company co-founded by Meléndez, and Aguas de Valencia, a 125-year-old private family-owned water treatment utility. The three partners formed a firm called Avanqua (Vancouver has a 25 per cent stake; Aguas de Valencia, 57 per cent; and Ket Gestión, 18 per cent) and submitted what ended up being the win- ning bid. (The deal was structured so that LITTLE WHITE WHALE This beluga lives in Oceanogràfic's Arctic Gallery, which is mod- elled on Vancouver's Graduate student Marla Cervantes designs components for the UVic-led Advanced Rare Isotope Laboratory (ARIEL) at Canada's TRIUMF lab. ARIEL will dramatically increase rare isotope production for scienti c research while creating health and economic bene ts for Canadians.