Birmingham Aquarium joke gets surprising local support

Did you see the Bham Now April Fools’ Day Breaking News Instagram post about converting Brookwood Village into the Brookwood Aquarium?

The nutty story, which was conjured up by our creative social team, has spawned a movement of sorts, including a change.org petition supporting the idea. 

But the idea, meant to garner a few chuckles, picked up a big supporter today on social media — John Boone, a Principal at Orchestra Partners in Birmingham.

Falling for the Brookwood Aquarium April Fools’ joke

Boone has been behind the development of several of Birmingham’s most ambitious projects in the past few years, including:

• Founders Station
• Merchantile on Morris
• Urban Supply
• The Frank

He has also developed Vision & Development plans for Gadsden and Phenix City.

Here is his response to Bham Now’s Linkedin poll, which showed overwhelming support for building an aquarium at the abandoned mall site.

What would you want to see done with Brookwood Village?

Retail shopping options — 19%

Condos — 10%

Aquarium — 68%

Other (Please comment) 3%

568 votes

John Boone: Your satirical post is one of the best development ideas I’ve ever heard for that property. If anyone wants to put a fund together and do it, give me a call and we’ll make it work financially.

We caught up with Boone to ask him what’s behind his support.

“I have this bad habit of falling for April Fools’ jokes every year even though I know it’s April 1. So that morning, I’m scrolling on Twitter,  and I see a bunch of stuff that’s ridiculous. I don’t take it seriously because it’s April Fools’. Well then I see Bham Now’s post about Brookwood turning into an aquarium.  I didn’t think for a second about it.

I was like, Oh, that’s a really cool idea. Later on, I realized oh, yeah, that was an April Fools’ joke! 

It then occurred to me that satirical posts about what should be done with the property is actually better than most of the real proposals that I see in the news.  So I thought that was pretty cool. And posted my support for it.”

~John Boone, Orchestra Partners

Bham Now social team stumbled across a good idea

Boone then told me the Bham Now social team in their quest to fool people may have stumbled across a really good idea.

“They were actually thinking like a good economic developer.” 

He described how developers of successful projects come up with the use of a property – an anchor — that is going to help build a brand around a larger project (retail, condos, possibly offices). An Aquarium would do that. People would visit it like they do the McWane Science Center, Birmingham Zoo and Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

Brookwood Aquarium? Can’t wait to see what is developed

And Boone wasn’t kidding about supporting an Aquarium or a similar creative idea financially. Boone and his partner Hunter Renfroe have pioneered the use of Seed Funds in real estate development.

Boone looks forward to seeing what  Colliers and Fairways have in mind for the old Brookwood Village property. Meanwhile, he didn’t mind being fooled.