Key Largo’s Pennekamp Park begins $52.5 million Discovery Center overhaul

More than 100 elected officials, community leaders, partners and park staff gathered at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Earth Day as Key Largo’s best-known marine attraction launched a $52.5 million rebuild that will reshape how visitors enter, learn and linger at the park.

The project will replace the current visitor center, aquarium and auditorium with a new Discovery Center & Aquarium built around interactive exhibits, wildlife observation areas, a coral restoration nursery overseen by Mote Marine Laboratory and seven saltwater aquariums holding a combined 43,000 gallons of seawater. The centerpiece tank, with more than 23,000 gallons, will focus on Florida’s Coral Reef.

The investment reaches well beyond the building itself. Plans also call for a new parking lot, reconfigured roads and replaced seawalls, changes that will be visible to anyone arriving at the park and are likely to shape how buses, families and tour groups move through the site during construction and after reopening. Florida State Parks says Pennekamp already draws almost a half-million visitors a year, a scale that makes the project meaningful not only for conservation, but for the Key Largo businesses, charter operators and seasonal workers that depend on the park’s traffic.

Monroe County Tourist Development Council President and CEO Kara Franker said the council committed $2 million to the effort, underscoring how local tourism leaders see Pennekamp as part of the county’s economic base. Funding also comes from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida State Parks, the Florida State Parks Foundation, The Batchelor Foundation and Friends of Pennekamp.

The park’s history gives the overhaul added weight. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park was created in response to reef damage concerns in the 1950s, when souvenir collection and other tourist pressure were harming coral. President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed the preserve in 1960, and it was dedicated on Dec. 10 of that year, later taking the name of John D. Pennekamp. Conservationists including Dr. Gilbert Voss pushed for protection of the area.

Today, the park covers about 70 nautical square miles, extends three miles into the Atlantic Ocean and sits beside the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Florida State Parks says the existing visitor center already includes large saltwater aquariums and a theater, so the new complex is an expansion of a long-running educational mission rather than a brand-new idea.

The Discovery Center & Aquarium is scheduled to open in fall 2028 and be completed in 2028. Florida State Parks Foundation says Mote scientists have already restored more than 200,000 corals to Florida’s reef, and the new center is meant to turn that work into something residents and tourists can see up close, at a time when Monroe County is also using tourist tax dollars to support other capital projects across the Keys.