Don Pacho
January 29th, 2005, 08:31 PM
Massive Metrozoo makeover planned
By NOAH BIERMAN
nbierman@herald.com
When Metrozoo opened, keepers envisioned wild cageless landscapes -- offering the nearest thing to viewing gorillas, zebras and squirrel monkeys in their midst.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the goitered gazelle. People got hot and sticky in the summer. Kids got tired of the long walks. The beasts found shady sports and got hard to spot.
''The kids are roaring to go at the beginning, but about halfway through, they're ready to go home,'' said Shaun Anderson, 34, who brought his 4-year-old daughter Skyler on Thursday but avoids the zoo in the summer.
So the zoo is changing, more than it has since it dropped the cages in Crandon Park and moved south in 1980 to Southwest 152nd Street off Florida's Turnpike. Tonight, donors and zoo leaders will board the Biscayne Lady Yacht to celebrate the start of its rebuilding campaign, which has silently raised $13.5 million from the private sector.
The zoo is embarking on its biggest fundraising drive ever and, as it spends $360 million over the next 20 years, zoo leaders plan to add more ''themed'' exhibits that include theaters and boat rides along with the animals.
The wide scale, once celebrated as crucial to making animals feel at home, is shrinking. New exhibits, planned to capitalize on the wealth of tropical monkeys and tapirs near Florida, will offer more of the great, air-conditioned, indoors.
Modest outdoor signs that explain where the species comes from and what it likes to eat will be overshadowed by tanks with touchable electric rays and jaguars that wander above visitors' heads on logs.
Combined with new roller coaster and water parks planned for the zoo's periphery, the line between zoo and theme park is blurring.
''This is the trend in zoos today,'' said Jack Brown, director of the Sante Fe Community College training zoo in Gainesville.
The word in the industry is ''immersion'' -- making visitors feel like they are in the same habitat as the animals. Metrozoo's old ''naturalistic'' approach offers wide paths for visitors and large fake rocks and real trees for animals, who are kept from visitors by moats instead of cages. An occasional cave, playground or misting machine cools things.
''We're quite blunt about this,'' said Glen Ekey, president of the Zoological Society of Florida, the nonprofit arm that runs the zoo fundraising and marketing as the county handles day-to-day operations. ``Our goal is to create the best zoo in the United States of America and possibly the world. Our battle cry is beat San Diego.''
HIGH RATING
Zagat's guide rates Metrozoo as South Florida's best attraction, but it's not close to San Diego in resources and attendance. Three of every four Metrozoo visitors come from Miami-Dade County, according to marketing director Paul Vrooman. Its attendance, 492,523, ranked 57th out of 173 accredited zoos in the country in 2003, the most recent comparison available.
San Diego's zoo and wild animal park, national landmarks, draw 10 times more visitors and spend 10 times more money and are run solely by a private nonprofit.
Metrozoo's next major project, a 27-acre section called Tropical America, will cost $36 million. It will be larger than the average American zoo. The firm paid $3.1 million for design and engineering, Jones & Jones Architecture of Seattle, designed many of the exhibits at Disney's Animal Kingdom and sections of the San Diego Zoo and the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.
NOT LIKE DISNEY
Designer Mario Campos insists Metrozoo will not look like Disney. Its mission is education and preservation, he said. Still, the change in philosophy is profound.
Two years ago, the zoo began its first immersion section, the $13.5 million Wings of Asia aviary.
''It's themed and it tells a story,'' said Vrooman. ``It's more of an adventure.''
The exhibit capitalizes on children's love of dinosaurs and uses archaeological evidence to emphasize that birds are ''living dinosaurs,'' a point reinforced with a movie. Vrooman walks by a spot where a girl is digging for fake fossils outside of an Asian-inspired shrine, as Eastern music and wind chimes play in the background.
Visitors see the lake from a side glass, with turtles at the bottom, tropical fish swimming and ducks diving down from the surface. ''This is the zoo of the future,'' Vrooman says.
It seems like a completely different zoo than the naturalistic giraffe pens, where trees are the closest thing to distractions from the animals.
Tropical America exhibits build on the new style. Three major sections -- the Brazilian Rainforest, the Cloud Forest of Costa Roca and the Amazon -- will explore different Latin American regions.
AMAZON ADVENTURE
Visitors to the Amazon, for example, will walk into a curvy glass enclosure that shows a dry river with monkeys and birds on one side and a flooded river with six-foot river fish on the other side. Nearby, harpy eagles, the world's largest, will swoon.
The building will include spots for an electric eel and small insects. And the same room will be available for fundraisers in the evening.
The cloud forest -- full of misting machines, monkeys and bromeliads -- will simulate high altitude with a berm that raises the ground level.
Older exhibits at Metrozoo generally have 20-foot pathways for people, difficult to shade with trees. To further cool those areas, the zoo continues to add more trees, benches and misting machines. Newer areas will have tight, four-to-six foot pathways. Scientists said shrinking animals' spaces won't hinder their care, especially the generally smaller animals chosen for the Tropical Americas.
Most captive animals do not use all their space because they do not hunt for food.
'A lot of it has more to do with the visitors' psychology than it does the animal welfare,'' said Bill Jungers, a Stony Brook University anatomy professor who studies the movement of captive animals.
DIFFERENT VIEW
Animal rights activists, who oppose zoos in general, see it differently.
'Their number one priority is to make a profit, if they can find a better way to get the people through the turn-stiles. The animals' needs are always going to be secondary,'' said Holly Bowman, campaigns coordinator for the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida.
Metrozoo has several advantages as it grows. Its species collection is larger than most zoos and only 12 zoos have more land.
Long-term, Commissioner Dennis Moss wants hotels, theme parks and video game entertainment complexes around the area. He hopes to rival the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando and draw more driving tourists who stay nearby.
TAKING BIDS
This summer, the county will take bids on an adjoining property for a water park. Zoo director Eric Stevens said he wouldn't mind if some of the water attractions bleed directly into the zoo.
Not everyone thinks the zoo needs a face-lift. Donald and Linda Monsalvatge, with their 20-month-old grandson Tye, relaxed at a shady spot near the gorillas Thursday afternoon.
''I don't think people appreciate nature enough. They'd rather go to a mall,'' Donald said. ``People ought to be flooding to this place.''
By NOAH BIERMAN
nbierman@herald.com
When Metrozoo opened, keepers envisioned wild cageless landscapes -- offering the nearest thing to viewing gorillas, zebras and squirrel monkeys in their midst.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the goitered gazelle. People got hot and sticky in the summer. Kids got tired of the long walks. The beasts found shady sports and got hard to spot.
''The kids are roaring to go at the beginning, but about halfway through, they're ready to go home,'' said Shaun Anderson, 34, who brought his 4-year-old daughter Skyler on Thursday but avoids the zoo in the summer.
So the zoo is changing, more than it has since it dropped the cages in Crandon Park and moved south in 1980 to Southwest 152nd Street off Florida's Turnpike. Tonight, donors and zoo leaders will board the Biscayne Lady Yacht to celebrate the start of its rebuilding campaign, which has silently raised $13.5 million from the private sector.
The zoo is embarking on its biggest fundraising drive ever and, as it spends $360 million over the next 20 years, zoo leaders plan to add more ''themed'' exhibits that include theaters and boat rides along with the animals.
The wide scale, once celebrated as crucial to making animals feel at home, is shrinking. New exhibits, planned to capitalize on the wealth of tropical monkeys and tapirs near Florida, will offer more of the great, air-conditioned, indoors.
Modest outdoor signs that explain where the species comes from and what it likes to eat will be overshadowed by tanks with touchable electric rays and jaguars that wander above visitors' heads on logs.
Combined with new roller coaster and water parks planned for the zoo's periphery, the line between zoo and theme park is blurring.
''This is the trend in zoos today,'' said Jack Brown, director of the Sante Fe Community College training zoo in Gainesville.
The word in the industry is ''immersion'' -- making visitors feel like they are in the same habitat as the animals. Metrozoo's old ''naturalistic'' approach offers wide paths for visitors and large fake rocks and real trees for animals, who are kept from visitors by moats instead of cages. An occasional cave, playground or misting machine cools things.
''We're quite blunt about this,'' said Glen Ekey, president of the Zoological Society of Florida, the nonprofit arm that runs the zoo fundraising and marketing as the county handles day-to-day operations. ``Our goal is to create the best zoo in the United States of America and possibly the world. Our battle cry is beat San Diego.''
HIGH RATING
Zagat's guide rates Metrozoo as South Florida's best attraction, but it's not close to San Diego in resources and attendance. Three of every four Metrozoo visitors come from Miami-Dade County, according to marketing director Paul Vrooman. Its attendance, 492,523, ranked 57th out of 173 accredited zoos in the country in 2003, the most recent comparison available.
San Diego's zoo and wild animal park, national landmarks, draw 10 times more visitors and spend 10 times more money and are run solely by a private nonprofit.
Metrozoo's next major project, a 27-acre section called Tropical America, will cost $36 million. It will be larger than the average American zoo. The firm paid $3.1 million for design and engineering, Jones & Jones Architecture of Seattle, designed many of the exhibits at Disney's Animal Kingdom and sections of the San Diego Zoo and the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.
NOT LIKE DISNEY
Designer Mario Campos insists Metrozoo will not look like Disney. Its mission is education and preservation, he said. Still, the change in philosophy is profound.
Two years ago, the zoo began its first immersion section, the $13.5 million Wings of Asia aviary.
''It's themed and it tells a story,'' said Vrooman. ``It's more of an adventure.''
The exhibit capitalizes on children's love of dinosaurs and uses archaeological evidence to emphasize that birds are ''living dinosaurs,'' a point reinforced with a movie. Vrooman walks by a spot where a girl is digging for fake fossils outside of an Asian-inspired shrine, as Eastern music and wind chimes play in the background.
Visitors see the lake from a side glass, with turtles at the bottom, tropical fish swimming and ducks diving down from the surface. ''This is the zoo of the future,'' Vrooman says.
It seems like a completely different zoo than the naturalistic giraffe pens, where trees are the closest thing to distractions from the animals.
Tropical America exhibits build on the new style. Three major sections -- the Brazilian Rainforest, the Cloud Forest of Costa Roca and the Amazon -- will explore different Latin American regions.
AMAZON ADVENTURE
Visitors to the Amazon, for example, will walk into a curvy glass enclosure that shows a dry river with monkeys and birds on one side and a flooded river with six-foot river fish on the other side. Nearby, harpy eagles, the world's largest, will swoon.
The building will include spots for an electric eel and small insects. And the same room will be available for fundraisers in the evening.
The cloud forest -- full of misting machines, monkeys and bromeliads -- will simulate high altitude with a berm that raises the ground level.
Older exhibits at Metrozoo generally have 20-foot pathways for people, difficult to shade with trees. To further cool those areas, the zoo continues to add more trees, benches and misting machines. Newer areas will have tight, four-to-six foot pathways. Scientists said shrinking animals' spaces won't hinder their care, especially the generally smaller animals chosen for the Tropical Americas.
Most captive animals do not use all their space because they do not hunt for food.
'A lot of it has more to do with the visitors' psychology than it does the animal welfare,'' said Bill Jungers, a Stony Brook University anatomy professor who studies the movement of captive animals.
DIFFERENT VIEW
Animal rights activists, who oppose zoos in general, see it differently.
'Their number one priority is to make a profit, if they can find a better way to get the people through the turn-stiles. The animals' needs are always going to be secondary,'' said Holly Bowman, campaigns coordinator for the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida.
Metrozoo has several advantages as it grows. Its species collection is larger than most zoos and only 12 zoos have more land.
Long-term, Commissioner Dennis Moss wants hotels, theme parks and video game entertainment complexes around the area. He hopes to rival the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando and draw more driving tourists who stay nearby.
TAKING BIDS
This summer, the county will take bids on an adjoining property for a water park. Zoo director Eric Stevens said he wouldn't mind if some of the water attractions bleed directly into the zoo.
Not everyone thinks the zoo needs a face-lift. Donald and Linda Monsalvatge, with their 20-month-old grandson Tye, relaxed at a shady spot near the gorillas Thursday afternoon.
''I don't think people appreciate nature enough. They'd rather go to a mall,'' Donald said. ``People ought to be flooding to this place.''