Opponents of the BREC administration’s proposal to relocate the Baton Rouge Zoo from Greenwood Park in north Baton Rouge to the Fairgrounds in the southeast part of the parish are celebrating Thursday night’s vote by the BREC Board of Commissioners to keep the zoo where it is.
“The breadth and depth of what people talked about at the meeting was inspiring in a lot of ways,” says commissioner Davis Rhorer, who was one of the most outspoken critics on the commission of the zoo relocation effort. “This city-parish came together last night. People in this community really want a zoo at Greenwood Park.”
So what now?
“Now the work begins,” Rhorer says.
What, exactly, that means isn’t clear. Commission Chairman Lloyd Benson says he intends to schedule meetings with Zoo Director Phil Frost and BREC Superintendent Carolyn McKnight and ask them to come up with a new set of plans for improvements to the zoo and the 600-acre Greenwood Park that has been its home for 50 years.  Â
“We are going to give them the tools and resources to make it a better zoo,” Benson says.
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, who, along with the mayors of Baker, Central and Zachary, lobbied commissioners to vote down the zoo move, also vows to help BREC and the zoo get the resources it needs to begin upgrades.
Broome says she cannot commit city-parish funds for the effort, but suggests she could help lead a capital campaign and identify potential funding sources.
“I will offer the leadership to acquire necessary resources to enhance and elevate the zoo,” she says. “It isn’t going to happen overnight, but their plan wasn’t going to happen overnight.”
The BREC administration’s proposal for a new zoo at the Fairgrounds and a reimagined Greenwood Park would have cost some $150 million—$110 million for the new zoo and $40 million for enhancements to Greenwood—and would have taken some five years to complete.
Still, BREC had argued the plan was more cost effective and efficient than renovating the zoo at Greenwood. BREC also argued that major donors in the community have privately indicated a greater willingness to support a new zoo in commercially vibrant southeast East Baton Rouge Parish than in the economically challenged north.
But Central Mayor Junior Shelton says he believes the recent outpouring of support shows a majority of the community wants the zoo to stay in north Baton Rouge and is willing to get behind it financially.
“I’m still just not comfortable with the idea of saying people will not come forward,” Shelton says. “The zoo is the zoo so if you’re in it for the reasons you should be in it for you should still be willing to donate.”
