Hogle Zoo is not moving this year, next year or for years to come! That's as good a place as any to start clearing up the misconceptions, misinformation and misrepresentations about the zoo's present and future.
Utah's Hogle Zoo has been at the mouth of Emigration Canyon for 70 years. It is owned by Salt Lake City but is privately operated by the Utah Zoological Society Board of Trustees. It receives no direct financial support from the city. Governmental support for the zoo does come from two sources: the Utah Legislature and Salt Lake County through the Zoo, Arts and Parks sales tax.
State legislative support, which is restricted to operating expenses, has varied annually from well below $1 million, to our present support of $1.7 million. It has never been as high as $2.3 million, as reported in a recent editorial. The ZAP support began in 1997 and is currently generating about $1.8 million of annual unrestricted support, which has helped generate some significant improvements at the zoo in recent years, including the recently opened Entry Plaza.
Over the years, Hogle Zoo has developed virtually all of its buildable land on the 40-acre site. The remaining land is extremely steep or is part of the remaining natural stretch of Emigration Creek. There is no land for the zoo to expand into, as Bonneville Golf Course, homes, Rotary Glen Park and This Is the Place Heritage Park surround the site. Although landlocked, the zoo's annual attendance has grown to more than 750,000 in recent years. With the population of the Wasatch Front predicted to grow to 3 million people by the year 2020, it is reasonable to assume that the zoo's attendance will continue to grow.
We were not looking for any "quick fix" solutions but rather long-term planning that would support a first-class zoo for 30, 40 or 50 years and beyond, just as the Hogle family did some 70 years ago.
Utah Senate President Al Mansell has supported the zoo and facilitated this process of long-term planning. During the process, the history and opportunities for the zoo in its current site were studied and discussed. In addition, several larger sites within Salt Lake County were studied for the opportunities they might provide.
Wheeler Farm was one of those sites and was chosen to develop a conceptual model for a new zoo. The preliminary, first draft concept plan for Wheeler Farm had an estimated cost of $260 million. That model was quickly abandoned because it proposed development of the entire site, with no land for future growth. Our studies also concluded that the process of planning and building a zoo on a new site would take at least seven and perhaps 10 years. That is why there is no chance that Hogle Zoo will move in the near future.
Throughout these studies, Sen. Mansell has steadfastly supported the process of long-term support for the creation of a great zoo and has never indicated any personal motives or advanced any ideas for personal gain. His vision for a great zoo, serving all of Utah, represents strong leadership and conviction, and recent attempts to discredit him in the media have been unfair and unsubstantiated.
In the end, it may cost as much to rebuild the current zoo as to build a new zoo of similar size on another site. The projected cost of a new zoo of 40 acres on a new site is approximately $120 million. Rebuilding the old zoo is estimated at $90 million in construction, but that does not include the extensive demolition and upgrading of old infrastructure that are not included in the master plan, so the actual costs may be higher.
Our hope is to bring city, county and state leadership together with our own board and members to form a public/private partnership that will focus on the goal of dramatically improving Hogle Zoo for the long-term future. If Utah's Hogle Zoo is to become a first-class recreational and educational resource for the growing Wasatch Front and the entire state, then major improvements will be necessary. We should stop the debate about "where" and concentrate on the "how."
Craig Dinsmore is the executive director of Utah's Hogle Zoo. He can be contacted at zoofuture@hoglezoo.org.