D’IBERVILLE — Moby Solangi took a gamble when he put Biloxi, D’Iberville and Gulfport in competition to be the host city for his Ocean Expo Learning Center.

He chose D’Iberville, but that decision came at a price.

Solangi said he hopes everyone can let go of any animosity his unorthodox method of having cities compete for a site may have caused. He hopes the other cities, and Coast residents, will support the project.

“It was not an easy decision,” he said.

Before the announcement was made March 31, each city’s officials thought they had made the proposal that would clinch the project.

Now D’Iberville celebrates, even as it looks for grants and funding to pay the city’s more than $16.5 million in commitments to the project, and Gulfport and Biloxi are focusing on other major developers eyeing the Coast.

Gulfport had offered five sites — close to the beach, downtown and at the Sportsplex off Interstate 10, next to Gulf Islands Water Park.

“That would have been a neat little entertainment complex,” city spokesman Ryan LaFontaine said.

A Jones Park location would have put the aquarium back near the site of the former Marine Life, and the former Veterans Administration property, now called Centennial Park, where Gulfport plans a complex of attractions, was also offered. Solangi’s Institute for Marine Mammal Studies is in Gulfport and LaFontaine said, “To me Gulfport probably made the most sense.”

Biloxi had offered two sites on the Back Bay in conjunction with a proposed Biloxi Boardwalk complex — a town center for special events along with an amusement pier, hotel, shops, restaurants and a marina.

Developer Chris Ferrara would have donated up to $14 million of waterfront land in exchange for tax breaks.

Biloxi’s incentives included seven years of property taxes, three years of flood insurance, installation of traffic signals and the possibility of $250,000 toward pumps and seawater-filtration equipment.

“With incentives like this, it makes you wonder what D’Iberville has given away,” Mayor A.J. Holloway said.

D’Iberville City Manager Michael Janus said Solangi also considered locating near the proposed Oyster Bay Casino at Fountain Beach, but decided on the site along the interstate. A new exit will bring people off I-10 close to the site, and Janus said the insurance rates will be $300,000 to $500,000 a year lower than on the waterfront and construction costs at least 10 percent less because the buildings won’t have to be elevated.