General contracting firm Rudolph and Sletten predicted the building would take 31 months (two and a half years) to construct, but project manager Linda Rhodes and architectural firm Esherick, Homsey, Dodge, and Davis (EHDD) first had to design the facility to fit Cannery Row. Those involved intended to reconstruct Hovden Cannery rather than destroy it, and EHDD acknowledged that the latter would be "a big disservice to our visiting public and to the community". Concrete sections of the building were able to be kept, but other areas were repurposed; the cannery's old warehouse was converted into administrative offices, and a seawater system for the aquatic exhibits replaced the cannery's pump house that brought fish to the warehouse from floating storage tanks in the bay. The facility was constructed around the cannery's boiler house, which is preserved as a non-functioning public exhibit. As the building would reside partially over water, unique challenges occurred throughout construction. Nearly half of the aquarium would be located over the bay in depths of up to , requiring foundational elements to be installed during low tide, which often occurred at night. According to a project manager with Rudolph and Sletten, excavations were sometimes lost as the composition of the ground underneath beach sand was inconsistent.
General contracting firm Rudolph and Sletten predicted the building would take 31 months (two and a half years) to construct, but project manager Linda Rhodes and architectural firm Esherick, Homsey, Dodge, and Davis (EHDD) first had to design the facility to fit Cannery Row. Those involved intended to reconstruct Hovden Cannery rather than destroy it, and EHDD acknowledged that the latter would be "a big disservice to our visiting public and to the community". Concrete sections of the building were able to be kept but other areas were repurposed; the cannery's old warehouse was converted into administrative offices, and a seawater system for the aquatic exhibits replaced the cannery's pump house that brought fish to the warehouse from floating storage tanks in the bay. The facility was constructed around the cannery's boiler house, which is preserved as a non-functioning public exhibit. As the building would reside partially over water, unique challenges occurred throughout construction. Nearly half of the aquarium would be located over the bay in depths of up to , requiring foundational elements to be installed during low tide, which often occurred at night. According to a project manager with Rudolph and Sletten, excavations were sometimes lost as the composition of the ground underneath beach sand was inconsistent.