A fight over the fate of BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo that has been brewing for some three years finally came to a head this week, when the BREC Board of Commissioners voted unanimously on Thursday evening to keep the zoo at its current location at Greenwood Park in north Baton Rouge.
The commission’s marathon meeting featured hours of tense testimony from supporters and opponents of a proposal to relocate the zoo to the Fairgrounds in the southeast part of the parish.
The battle over the zoo dates back to 2015, when a study on the economic impact of the zoo was completed by Philadelphia-based Schultz & William. The study also included an ambitious vision for a new zoo, and BREC Superintendent Carolyn McKnight told 225 at the time that “it is time to move the zoo in a new direction.”
Now that the BREC board has decided to keep the zoo at its current location, big questions still remain. Among them: What will BREC do to enhance offerings at the struggling zoo and boost attendance, and—perhaps more importantly—will it require additional tax dollars?
“Now the work begins,” is how Davis Rhorer—one of the most outspoken critics on the commission of the zoo relocation effort—put it to Daily Report this morning.
What that means in the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s vote isn’t exactly clear. Commission Chairman Lloyd Benson says he intends to schedule meetings with Zoo Director Phil Frost and 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.
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome—who joined the mayors of Baker, Central and Zachary to lobby against moving the zoo—also is vowing 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.
