Bar owner Mark Sellers reflects on 'duty' to protect Titanic shipwreck as exhibit opens in Grand Rapids

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — When it comes to cocktail conversation, it’s hard to trump “I control the Titanic shipwreck” as an attention grabber.

"I have no problem meeting new people," said Grand Rapids businessman Mark Sellers, best known in West Michigan as owner of the popular HopCat beer bar, Stella's Lounge and the new downtown Grand Rapids Brewing Co.

But brewery owner is only one hat for Sellers, who, as board chairman of Premier Exhibitions Inc., helped bring the infamous ocean liner's remains to West Michigan as the latest high-profile exhibit at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

"Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition" opened Saturday, Feb. 9, with more than 150 artifacts that tell the story of the passengers and crew who died the night of April 14-15, 1912, in one of the most widely known and tragic maritime disasters in history.

The traveling exhibit is organized by RMS Titanic Inc., a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions (PRXI), a company over which Sellers' investment fund, Sellers Capital Management Inc., gained control following a proxy battle in late 2008, shortly after his relocation to Grand Rapids and the opening of HopCat on Ionia Avenue SW.

“Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition”

Details: Grand Rapids Public Museum, 272 Pearl St. NW. Opening Saturday, Feb. 9, running through Sunday, July 7.

Exhibition Hours: 9-5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays (until 9 p.m. Tuesdays) and 12 noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Extended evening hours on select dates. Go online for more information.

Tickets: $17 adults, $16 seniors, $12 children ages 3-18; Free for children 2 and younger.

Call: 800-585-3737 or go to startickets.com.

More info: Call 616-929-1700.

Today, Sellers Capital Management owns 46 percent of Premier stock, with Sellers owning an undisclosed partial stake in that percentage. The company also owns the controversial "Bodies Revealed" exhibit that came to Grand Rapids in 2010.

The Titanic exhibit will remain in Grand Rapids for five months, brought here by Premier with prompting by Sellers despite some internal concerns that the company was doubling-up in Michigan following a six-month run of the Titanic artifacts in 2012 at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.

Sellers, a 1986 East Kentwood High School graduate who seldom grants interviews about Premier, said the company was already in discussions with Grand Rapids before he became involved, but “I made it very well known that I wanted them to get the deal done and not play hardball on the negotiations.”

“It probably would have happened anyway, but I think it might have been a longer process between the museum and Premier.”

Related: 2013 Michiganders to Watch: Mark Sellers

The publicly traded company has made eight expeditions to the Titanic wreck site since it was discovered in 1985 by explorer Robert Ballard. Premier maintains exclusive salvage rights to the wreck since it was granted salvor-in-possession status by a U.S. federal court in 1994, although the court battles over wreck title would continue another 15 years.

The expeditions have yielded more than 5,500 artifacts for Premier, which together have appraised at $189 million. The catch, however, is that a federal judge in 2010 ruled the collection must remain whole should it be sold.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, in Norfolk, Va., ruled that, not only must the collection be sold in one lot, it must be preserved intact and remain available to future generations for public display, historical review, scholarly research and educational purposes.

Last April, during the attention surrounding the sinking's 100-year anniversary, Premier's well-publicized auction of the artifacts was postponed indefinitely when several interested parties came forward. In October, Premier said in a regulatory filing that an unnamed group of individuals had signed a non-binding letter of intent to purchase the artifacts for $189 million.

Sellers declined to elaborate on the ongoing negotiations other than to say “it’s taken us a lot longer than we thought to get to this point.”

Depending on how the eventual owners decide to exhibit the collection — spread out among museums or maintained in a central location, Sellers has said that Grand Rapids could be one of the last places that gets a traveling Titanic exhibit.

Last year, detailed wreck surveys were publicized alongside the anniversary hoopla — extremely high-resolution images taken in 2010 that reveal the wreck topography in substantial detail. Premier partnered with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on the survey mapping.

The media scrutiny included comments from explorer Ballard about Premier, whom he characterized as grave robbers with a “sordid” history, but Sellers said those days are well in the company’s rear-view mirror, especially since he took over, ousted longtime Premier chief Arnie Gellar and installed new management that approaches the wreck as an archeological site, not a salvage opportunity.

Currently, Premier has no plans to return for more salvage operations although they are legally permitted to go back as much as they want. “At some point it’s a matter of diminishing returns,” said Sellers, due to the estimated $3 million to $4 million cost of expeditions.

“You could get more cups and saucers, but are you really going to get anything that’s totally unique? It’s a crap shoot,” he said. “We don’t know what’s still down there and it’s hard to make a financial commitment to spend more when we already have so many artifacts at this point.”

Sellers said Premier has only collected artifacts from the ship’s debris field — items that spilled out of the ship’s interior and spread across the ocean floor during the liner’s death throes, break up and 2.3-mile descent to the bottom.

“People think we’ve just taken whatever we can,” he said. “We’ve never taken anything from the actual ship itself and I think that’s an important point to make.”

"Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition" at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.

Why? “It’s sacred.”

“It’s the consensus within the company, but it wasn’t at one time,” he said. “The previous management tried it and the court issued an injunction to stop them.”

Sellers, who has seen the various Premier artifacts on display numerous times, said he’s always struck by the element of hubris involved in the disaster — an “unsinkable” ship that became host to an iconic struggle for life and death among passengers of different backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. A total of 1,496 people died that night, more than 100 years ago, mostly poor, third-class travelers.

The ship was a monument to modern engineering at the time, and it was fast. But its size and speed were no match for the ancient forces of Mother Nature, brought to bear in the form of a slow, plodding iceberg.

Although “I’ve kind of fallen in love with it,” Sellers said, the Titanic was not the reason he started buying up Premier stock in 2007. “I bought the stock because I thought it was an undervalued company.”

“Now, I feel it’s my duty to protect (the Titanic) from people who would exploit it.”

Email Garret Ellison or follow him on Twitter.

Location of Titanic shipwreck

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