Elk Grove council OKs new agreement for America’s first zoo in more than 30 years
Elk Grove’s push to land the Sacramento Zoo reached another marker, with city leaders signing off on a new pact with zoo officials late Wednesday. Meanwhile, a new design firm has been selected to sketch out plans for the nation’s first newly built zoo in more than three decades.
The city’s agreement with Sacramento Zoological Society that maps out the next phase of work on the 70-acre project — a master plan for an initial 41 acres, a formal financing road map and a report on the project’s environmental impacts — received council members’ OK at its Wednesday meeting. City officials said work is expected to take up to two years to complete.
City leaders in March extended their exclusive talks with the zoo society through May 31 and got a glimpse of the zoo’s vision of a regional attraction projected to draw 1.2 million visitors a year.
Meantime, the zoo society recently hired a Seattle zoo design firm to create a conceptual plan for the zoo and said it can now begin work on fundraising by courting corporate partners, community organizations and individual donors.
SHR Studios’ resume includes projects for zoos in Omaha, in Nashville and in Houston, where city officials visited in a fact-finding tour late last year.
“We know that the entire region is excited about the prospect of a new and expanded zoological park and we will need everyone’s assistance to build the new zoo,” society president Elizabeth Stallard said in a statement.
Elk Grove and the zoo society have been at work for nearly a year to move the aging Sacramento Zoo from its nearly 15-acre Land Park plot to a new 70-acre site at Kammerer Road and Lotz Parkway in southeast Elk Grove. For years, zoo officials had sought a larger site in Sacramento and they were forced to shed signature species such as hippopotamus because of undersized habitats.
An African savanna and wildlife from Asia and Australia would be part of a new regional zoo. A potential pairing with UC Davis could also bring a veterinary hospital to a new Elk Grove zoo.
Elk Grove is planning public and online information events beginning this summer, officials said.
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