BREC’s golf courses and the Baton Rouge Zoo will complete their own strategic plans this year, separate from the systemwide Imagine Your Parks II plan underway now. The golf program and the zoo have unique sets of issues that are best examined in isolation, says BREC Commissioner Craig Freeman.
“Thematically, it just makes more sense to keep these separate,” Freeman says.
Since the first Imagine Your Parks planning process in 2003, public golf has been a hot-button issue, notably the 9-hole City Park Golf Course. Baton Rouge residents were divided about the best use for the course, some arguing that it should become a signature park similar to City Park in New Orleans. Instead, the Imagine Your Parks plan created the City-Brooks Community Park and an adjacent dog park across the street. The plan also rebuilt and expanded the park’s tennis center and courts.
Opponents of the course at City Park have criticized it as a money loser. But no golf course—nor any other park or attraction within the BREC system—spins off cash. Liberty Lagoon is the only one that comes close.
McKnight says that based on user surveys conducted by BREC, the majority of respondents want to see the land at City Park kept as a 9-hole golf course.
But McKnight says that nationwide the popularity of golf is down in public park systems, and she says that East Baton Rouge Parish has too many courses.
BREC’s other golf courses include Webb Park, Beaver Creek, Dumas Memorial, Howell Park, Santa Maria and Clark Park, which offers the low-cost First Tee program for children. Dumas, Santa Maria and Beaver Creek all now serve alcohol, which could make them more appealing to a broader audience.
“We need to go about the process of evaluating golf very carefully. We know for a fact that we have an overabundance of golf courses,” she says. “I want someone to come in and take a look at our entire golf operations. We need experts who understand the business and who can give us an outside opinion of how to get the most out of it.”
The golf consultant should be hired in mid-spring, says McKnight, and the plan will be completed by the end of 2014.
The Baton Rouge Zoo, located north of the city in Baker, also faces complex challenges. Despite $8 million in recent improvements, many of the exhibits on the sprawling 146-acre site are outdated. It lacks popular animal species, such as lions and gorillas, and last year the zoo had to phase out its elephant exhibit because the pen’s inferior size and quality would have threatened overall reaccreditation through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
About 250,000 people a year visit the Baton Rouge Zoo, the highest of any BREC site. The Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, which sits on a site less than half the size of the Baton Rouge Zoo, attracts 850,000 visitors annually.
A trend among modern zoos is the addition of interactive exhibits, like water parks or ropes courses, which draw older children and teenagers.
The Audubon Zoo installed Cool Zoo in 2011, an animal-themed water park in the middle of the facility that has substantially increased attendance and revenue. Cameron Park Zoo in Waco includes a splash park in its playground, and Zoo Atlanta opened an 18-jet water feature called Splash Fountain in July 2013.
“In this business, if you’re not building something new, you’re losing market share. It needs to be a destination where you can have new experiences,” says Baton Rouge Zoo Director Phil Frost.
McKnight says she’d like to see new amenities, along with a wider variety of animals and exhibits that are clearly connected to education.
“I would love to see us have a zoo where [visitors] can experience the animals in their natural habitat while also having revenue-generating entertainment zones set up, like an amphitheater, restaurants, lazy rivers, and event facilities for wedding receptions and corporation events,” she says. “I can imagine a zoo where we’re serving twice the number of people because we have the things that will draw visitors and encourage them to drive.”
On McKnight’s short list of zoo improvements is moving the entrance to Highway 19, so that users pass through BREC’s recently expanded Greenwood Park next door.
