Sacramento was never going to keep the zoo. Moving to Elk Grove is the best possible outcome

There’s a good chance that Sacramento will lose its beloved zoo after nearly a century at its 15-acre site in Land Park. Ever since the Sacramento Zoo began its latest push to move three years ago, consumed by the notion that survival as a modern zoo necessitated expansion, this was probably inevitable.

And you know what? That’s OK.

See, the announcement last week that the zoo had entered into an “exclusive negotiating agreement” with Elk Grove officials was shocking only because it introduced a reality that Sacramento has been unable to face for years.

There’s plenty of blame — or responsibility, at least — to go around. For decades, false starts have been the one constant in relocation talks, largely due to a lack of unified political will on the City Council and restless zoo leadership that was short on options to match their ambitions. That’s not to say the council didn’t care or try, but Sacramento officials were never united behind a destination because none of the studied locations could actually work.

The finalists? Sleep Train Arena, North Natomas Regional Park and Bing Maloney Golf Course. When the council tabled the relocation discussion during a December meeting and never picked it back up again, Sacramento officials ultimately signaled they were back at square one. The zoo decided it was time to move on.

“We were responding to basically being told that those options were no longer viable,” said Elizabeth Stallard, board president of the Sacramento Zoological Society. “The city’s own efforts to essentially start over (this year) and say, ‘Well, is there anywhere else we could look?’ was a clear indication that those three sites were not somewhere they were still looking.”

Natomas, either at the former Sacramento Kings arena site or at the regional park, was supposedly the city’s most realistic landing spot. At least a dozen sites had been analyzed through various studies over the years, including the most recent feasibility study last year, which put the golf course into the mix as a last resort. But Natomas had the space and supporting elements like hotels, highways and the airport.

Zoo was an afterthought

As it turns out, nothing within city limits was feasible.

The Kings were reluctant but engaged in talks. Then the pandemic struck and sports stopped indefinitely. The likelihood that a private entity with arena debt would donate land without adding significant economic value was utterly fanciful.

By June, we realized what the Kings had been holding out for when the California Northstate University hospital deal was announced. It’ll add a major hospital, trauma center and medical school that could bring up to 3,000 jobs as well as new housing to a fast-growing suburb close to the city core.

That meant North Natomas Regional Park was the last legitimate option. But the prospect of paving over parkland and building new infrastructure was a hard sell, said Mayor Pro-Tem Angelique Ashby, the district’s council member. It was also unclear whether the price to build that infrastructure would be greater than the added cost of buying a portion of the remaining 150 acres at Sleep Train, she said.

“I could see why the zoo got tired of waiting for the city and spoke with other entities in the region,” said Ashby, who reiterated several times that her preference is for it to stay in Sacramento. “But I’d rather have them in Elk Grove rather than not having it at all.”

In an ideal world, Sacramento would have done what the city of Denver did. In 2017, voters backed a $937 million bond package that included $117 million for expanding cultural amenities such as the city zoo, botanical gardens, museums and performing arts centers. The only politics was over how to repay the debt and persuade voters to support such a large investment. And it worked.

As we all know, Sacramento expended that type of political capital on the Golden 1 Center and the campaign to keep the ever-struggling Kings. The city put up $255 million for that venture and another $350 million in municipal bonds to expand the Convention Center, Community Center Theater and Memorial Auditorium.

The Sacramento Zoo was an afterthought, and instead had to foot the relocation bill itself (with donors, of course) and hope that the city would make a contribution. However, there was never an appetite for that, given the hardships caused by the pandemic and the city’s “urgent crises,” as Mayor Darrell Steinberg told The Bee last week. Sacramento is more focused on building affordable housing, and the city’s priorities for development are “our waterfront, railyards and neighborhood business corridors,” he said.

Rally behind Elk Grove

The cost of moving the zoo has ranged from a conservative $83 million in some reports to $129.1 million or higher for the full build-out, according to the most recent feasibility study. Stallard said it was too early to predict how much moving to Elk Grove would cost.

What no one wants to say out loud is that Sacramento was never in a position to keep the zoo here in the first place. The barriers were always there, whether they were financial, political, environmental or some combination of all three.

The zoo has been forced to give away large animals such as hippos and tigers under the pressure of stringent regulations from the Association of Zoos & Aquariums. Without room to grow, zoo officials posited the boogeyman that they could lose their accreditation as a way to compel action. In reality, they would have just kept giving animals away to stay open.

We should be cheering for Elk Grove to pull this off. It’s a prime destination for families, home to one of the largest single school districts in the state and one of the fastest growing economies nationwide. With a potential 60-acre parcel in the county’s second-largest city on the table, zoo officials say the project would triple their size, and it’s only 20 minutes south on the highway. Larger habitats, expanded veterinary care and welfare efforts — those are good things.

Aside from the people who hate zoos altogether, the only reason some critics are truly upset about the zoo moving is because it’s another symbol of a changing Sacramento. It’s fond memories in a space that one day will be replaced. Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela, whose district includes the zoo, said “it’s upsetting, there’s no other word for it.”

“What’s hard, especially for folks that grew up in Sacramento, they all went to the zoo,” Valenzuela said. “To them, it feels like losing a piece of their community that they valued.”

That’s not enough to force the zoo to stay, and certainly not enough to try to stop Elk Grove from taking it.

This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM.