JUNE

With Long Beach city fathers at it again, skeptics were having a field day. Project after project had gone sour: Pay-for-play softball, downtown redevelopment, minor league baseball. Now, despite a chronic budget deficit, city leaders decided to build a world-class aquarium with borrowed money. Bond payments were based on drawing 1.6 million visitors a year. Critics went wild. Draw that many people to Long Beach? Surprise, surprise. In less than six months of 1998, the Long Beach aquarium had drawn 1 million visitors and nearly 48,000 season passes had been sold--tops among the nation’s aquariums.