by Natasha Khairullah
Staff Writer
Despite area construction, continued internal structural development and a stigma of being just a place to “take the kids,” The Jacksonville Zoological Gardens has had its most financially successful year to date.
With a handful of major projects in the works all slated to be completed within the next year, the Zoo’s goal of becoming the South’s premier animal and botanical destination is within arm’s reach.
“Second only to the year we opened the Range of the Jaguars (in 2004), this has been the best year so far,” said the Zoo’s Executive Director Dennis Pate. “People are starting to realize, ‘This isn’t the old zoo’ and they’re coming out in droves.”
The Zoo’s attendance budget as of March was $86,000, but $100,080 was actually generated – up 19 percent from last year, said Pate.
Part of that success comes from the growing awareness that the Zoo, which since its opening in 1914 has see-sawed between financial despair and simply sustaining a small member following, is a place for all guests, all the time.
“We’re finding that people are visiting more on a regular basis as opposed to a once-a-year trip,” said Jacksonville Zoo Chairman and trial lawyer Howard Coker. “The great thing about it (each exhibit) is that it changes every week. So when you bring the children, what they see one week may be totally different from what they see another week.”
Part of the public’s embrace of the “new Zoo” has come from a number of areas including what Pate refers to as the new aggressive “Zoo Awareness Campaign” – featuring Jacksonville Zoo billboards around the city – as well as the recent inclusion of gardens to the Zoo.
“When we were a just Zoo, we attracted one type of guest. But now that we’ve expanded to include gardens, the demographics of who comes here is really stretched,” he said. “So whether you’re 5 or 65, there’s something here for you now.”
Pate says there was a need for botanical gardens since one doesn’t exist between Atlanta and south Florida.
“They (the gardens) have allowed us to broaden our audience quite a bit,” said Coker, adding that a major boost for the Zoo was also provided by the The Range of the Jaguar exhibit.
The $15 million exhibit, which features plants and over 100 different types of animals from Central and South American rain forests, turned the Zoo into a regional player in Florida’s tourism market when it opened three years ago.
It was the linchpin in a 10-year, $30 million expansion plan designed to transform the Zoo from a locals’ day-trip destination to an attraction capable of competing with Orlando for tourist dollars. It also helped bump the Zoo’s annual attendance to well above half a million annually, with about one in nine of the groups visiting coming from outside Jacksonville.
“Our current projects keep with the upward momentum,” said Coker, who became chairman in 2005.
Projects on the Zoo’s current agenda include a $2 million Asian Garden, a Komodo Dragon exhibit and the Gardens at Trout River Plaza – a half-acre project that would help increase internally-generated funds by nearly 50 percent.
The Gardens at Trout River Plaza project is a linear English garden area with garden-like pockets for animal exhibits. It was built with events like weddings and bar mitzvahs in mind and will include storage areas and its own restrooms.
“We needed a big open space in the Zoo that would give us the flexibility to do all sorts of things. We are running out of space as we grow and that will really help fill a very important facility for us,” said Pate.
The project, which should be completed in August – weather permitting – will generate significant revenue to help even out the Zoo’s operating expense budget, he added.
There are also a number of smaller projects on the drawing board right now, including new landscaping on both sides of Zoo Parkway – a $452,000 project, new entrance signage and parking lot expansion, all of which Coker said is simply the Zoo’s equivalent to a “spring cleaning.”
“This is all to kind of help with accessibility,” he said. “The I-95 construction has been a bit of an inconvenience and so we’re trying to make it easier for folks. The new signage and removal of trees that obstruct the view of the entrance is just one example how we’re going about that.”
The parking lot expansion will enlarge the current surface lot by a third and will occupy the property that was acquired a little over a year ago by the City and supplemented by funds from Zoo. The City invested about $12 million in 2005 in the ongoing expansion, which also attracted support from a number of the City’s business leaders. Past Zoo donors included Delores Barr Weaver and Wayne Weaver, Tom and Betty Petway, Winn-Dixie and the Florida Times-Union.
Planning for the lot expansion should be underway this year with construction to start the following year.
“We need it,” said Coker. “Build it and they will come.”