LONG BEACH SAYS L.A. PLAN SEEMS FAMILIAR.

Byline: Patrick McGreevy Daily News Staff Writer

To officials at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, plans for a new World of the Pacific aquarium in Exposition Park sound awfully familiar.

Planners for the proposed Exposition Park facility have talked about having a fish tank depicting a corral reef, an exhibit with sea lions, a shark tank and a full-scale fiberglass replica of a whale.

``Sounds familiar,'' Russell Hill, a Long Beach Aquarium board member, said Thursday.

In fact, the Long Beach aquarium, which opened two months ago, features a multistory shark tank, a corral-reef tank, sea lions and - not one - but two large fiberglass whales.

The similarity of features has some Long Beach officials, including aquarium President Warren Iliff, a little nervous.

After all, the city of Long Beach guaranteed the private revenue bonds that financed its $117 million aquarium - and would have to chip in with hotel taxes and port fees if it does not get 1.5 million visitors a year to make the payments on the bonds.

Since its opening, the Long Beach aquarium has averaged 9,000 visitors a day - on track to hit the 1.5 million target, officials said.

Still, they're wary of the Los Angeles proposal.

``It certainly could be a concern,'' said Hill. ``We would just hope that (the Los Angeles project) is not derivate, that it's complementary, when it's built.''

Iliff agreed.

``I'm always nervous,'' he said. ``We're heavily dependent on paying off the bonds and we need attendance to do that. We think (the L.A. aquarium) can be complementary.''

Even without the Exposition Park project, there are already four aquariums in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area.

In addition to the 157,000-square-foot Long Beach aquarium, which is the fourth largest in the nation, there are also smaller aquariums in Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica and San Pedro.

The Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, which is owned and operated in San Pedro by the city of Los Angeles, has 35 fish tanks in a 22,265-square-foot museum, including a tank with sharks, and hands-on learning exhibits where school children can touch starfish and other sea animals.

Cabrillo operators have plans for a $4 million expansion to add research and discovery centers for the thousands of school children who visit the site each year, but the aquarium has not yet been able to obtain the money, said Larry Fukuhara, program director.

California Science Center director Jeffrey Rudolph said Long Beach officials needn't worry that they are getting competition from his project in Exposition Park.

``We are not viewing this as just an aquarium. We are viewing it as a part of the (existing) Science Center,'' Rudolph said. ``We are talking with them regularly. We clearly want to work collaboratively. We will not look like they look.''

Rudolph was successful this week in persuading the Los Angeles City Council to ask voters in November to approve a bond measure for his project. About $30 million of the $46.5 million bond measure would go to construction of the World of the Pacific, which a brochure says ``will be unlike any zoo, aquarium, science center, museum or botanical garden ever created.''

``It does seem strange in the shadow of the Long Beach aquarium to be talking about building a new one in Los Angeles,'' said Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Fox, who has signed up to possibly write the ballot argument against the bond measure, said he is concerned about using taxpayer dollars for a project that may not be necessary.

``That's a question the voters are going to have to ask themselves,'' he said.