Tucson City Council votes to expand Reid Park Zoo to the northwest

The Tucson City Council voted Tuesday to move forward with expanding Reid Park Zoo to the northwest using a design that takes in elements of two concepts that had the most support among several plans.

The council voted 6-1 on a motion to continue suspending the zoo expansion project to create a redesigned plan that saves Barnum Hill and the southern duck pond. Expansion will take place northwest of the Edith Ball Adaptive Recreation Center.

The motion also called for minimizing the need to use open green space for the project, maximizing the reuse of hardscape and ensuring the additional cost of the project is less than $5.5 million.

The new plan calls for amending the zoo’s master plan the mayor and council finalized in October 2018. Tucson voters approved a one-tenth of 1% sales tax hike to fund "capital improvements, operations, and maintenance" at the zoo in 2017. This money is funding the zoo expansion. 

Mayor and council members paused the originally planned westward expansion into 3½ acres of Reid Park, which would take over the park’s southern duck pond and Barnum Hill area. Outcry from the public over the loss of green space and a popular part of the park next to the zoo caused city leaders to temporarily halt the project.

The expansion will make way for the zoo’s “Pathway to Asia” exhibit to help Malayan tiger conservation efforts and also will create a reptile house and aviary.

City Council ordered the pause to make time for a dialogue among community stakeholders. The 45-day public outreach mission included conducting the largest citywide survey ever and assembling an 18-member stakeholder group to help recommend a plan.

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Two concepts dubbed D and G emerged among the most favorable recommendations among stakeholders.

After considering the input, City Manager Michael Ortega recommended moving forward with the Concept D. While it would preserve the duck pond and hill, Concept D calls for expanding the zoo northwest into 4½-acres of the park’s green space. It comes with an $3.6 million estimated cost and delaying expansion by a year.

Save the Heart of Reid Park, a nonprofit formed to advocate against zoo expansion into the park, pushed for a concept they call “G-minor,” a revised version of Concept G, which would re-route expansion north into a city-owned storage yard and avoid taking over park space. Bob Vint, a local architect, helped design the idea.

While the concept wasn’t considered by the stakeholder group, the nonprofit says the cost would be comparable to Concept D, but would require $1.5 million to relocate storage buildings and up to $500,000 to build a concrete arch bridge to connect the expansion space to the zoo.

Before the council’s decision, the Reid Park Zoological Society said Concept D would be the option least intrusive to Reid Park and offers the “most efficient and effective path forward.”

“We look forward to the mayor and council’s decision on Tuesday and to working cooperatively with the city of Tucson to carry out that decision,” the society wrote in a news release Monday. “We continue to focus our efforts on providing the community with a high-quality recreational and educational experience while creating lifelong memories.”

The city will have to work with designers and contractors to come up with a new plan for northwest expansion, which the council intends to include components of both the D and G-minor plans.