Photos: The Reid Park Zoo is Receiving a Facelift and Expanding

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo Expansion

Reid Park Zoo prepares for major expansion this spring

Reid Park Zoo is preparing to begin a 3½-acre expansion this spring, a project designed to transport visitors to Asia with a larger tiger habitat, an aviary, reptile house and several new animal species.

The “Pathways to Asia” expansion is the next step in a 10-year, $80 million plan to renovate and improve the zoo, which has been a staple in the Tucson community for over 50 years. Voters approved the initiative in 2017 when they voted yes on a slight sales-tax increase for the next decade, providing between $8 million and $10 million in annual funding for improvements to the zoo.

“The old Reid Park Zoo, in the ’70s with its small enclosures, is no longer acceptable,” said zoo President and CEO Nancy Kluge. “These animals are intelligent and deserve to have the best space that will not only meet their physical means, but their emotional and mental needs as well.”

Construction for the expansion will begin in February or March 2021 and will extend into Reid Park across Lakeshore Drive, taking over the park’s southern pond and Barnum Hill. It will bring several new species to Tucson, including red pandas, fishing cats, sloth bears and a Komodo dragon, and will also provide more space for the animals who already reside at the zoo. For the Malayan tigers, this means a new, 17,000-square-foot habitat that is five times larger than the current one.

“There are only about 300 left in the world of that particular tiger,” Kluge said. “It’s really important for us to tell their story as well as have room to be able to breed these tigers so that they continue to exist.”

Kluge said the zoo has already started to receive some new animals for the expansion, including some birds that will live in the new aviary. The zoo works with other zoos and national organizations to coordinate animal transfers and help find certain species.

“We select species with several things in mind, and one is the need for space when talking to the other zoos and finding animals that we can provide more space for,” she said. “And then we look at considerations like whether they work well in our climate and whether our staff is equipped to take care of them.”

The zoo is already well into Phase 1 of its decadelong master plan and has completed, or is nearing completion, on a number of other improvements.

This includes the new Temple of Tiny Monkeys, which provides an expanded space for energetic monkeys to roam, as well as the lion habitat, where guests will now be able to observe the animal care team working with the lions.

The construction of the Welcome Plaza, as well as the new Flamingo Lagoon at the entrance of the park, is expected to wrap up by the end of 2020 and will be officially revealed in January.

According to Kluge, a big part of these improvements will also be to make repairs or replace the existing infrastructure, including water and electricity lines, some of which are more than 60 years old.

In preparing for the next step of Phase 1, the 3½-acre expansion, zoo leaders said they’ve worked closely with local officials to ensure the process is as seamless as possible and doesn’t disrupt any nearby wildlife or nature. Kluge said the ducks who live at Reid Park, for example, will still have access to the park’s northern pond and will also be able to fly in and out of the zoo after the expansion.

“As a conservation organization, animal care is our top priority,” she said. “Protecting habitats within the park is just as important to us. So, we went and contacted the Arizona Game & Fish Department and other wildlife officials to talk about the plan and make sure everything was done the right way.”

In addition, Kluge said the zoo also consulted with an arborist to evaluate the trees in the area and revised plans to ensure they could work around them.

For Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik, who represents Ward 6 and the Reid Park area, the zoo’s master plan is a much needed step into the future and will ensure the safety of animals for years to come.

“People need to remember that the zoo expansion project was planned in collaboration with input from veterinary experts and consistent with continuing the international accreditation the zoo holds,” he said. “This is about improving the habitat for the animals, enhancing the experience for visitors to the zoo, and most importantly to me it will continue the great work in animal conservation the zoo is involved with. I know all of those are reasons the public embraced the expansion when it was approved a few years ago.”

The zoo has also facilitated more than 100 public meetings and presentations to get feedback from the community on the expansion project, a process they said has given them great insight into the support that residents have for the project.

“Our goal is always to be able to provide the best care and best space for these animals, with the ultimate goal of connecting people with these animals so that they can also understand how intelligent and amazing they are, and give people actions they can take to be able to protect animals in the wild,” Kluge said.

After the “Pathways to Asia” expansion is completed in early 2023, the zoo will move onto Phase 2 of the master plan, which will transform the middle of the zoo into an African safari with lions, elephants, rhinos and improvements to the area’s infrastructure. In Phase 3, the zoo’s South American habitats will be renovated and the park’s gift shop will be expanded.

In addition to improvements at the zoo, Reid Park is also being spruced up. City officials are planning to add a splash pad and renovate existing playgrounds, walking paths, as well as the DeMeester Outdoor Performance Center. The north pond and water fountain will also be getting a new pump system, which will improve water quality for the local ducks.

Tim Steller's opinion: Zoo expansion at Reid Park colonizes irreplaceable hill, pond

For now, people can freely roam around the south duck pond in Reid Park, or up Barnum Hill.

No fees, no fences — just an open oasis of trees and water and birds.

Your free access will end in February as the Reid Park Zoo takes over the 3½ acres including the south pond and the hill — unless a new insurgency stops it.

A group calling itself Save the Heart of Reid Park formed after the members learned of the long-standing plan for the zoo to take over the precious place in early November.

This is the area just south of the park’s larger pond that is unshaded and surrounded by a paved walking path, all of which would remain. The two ponds are connected by a trickling stream,and two rivulets of pumped water run down either side of the hill, one into each pond. Mature Aleppo pines and eucalyptus trees shade the south pond’s hill and shore.

Before this, the last zoo expansion, completed in 2012, handed over 7 acres of Reid Park along East 22nd Street. Together, that would be around 11 acres of open park, with no entry fee, lost in the last 10 years to a city-owned zoo that you have to pay to enter.

I used to play soccer on the field that since 2012 has been the enlarged enclosure for the zoo’s elephants. Hard to kick a ball there now. As little ones, my kids used to run around the hill, streams and pond now slated for removal from the park.

On Friday, I met a woman at the south pond feeding the waterfowl with her kids. Blanca Calderon told me that she, her 1-year-old daughter, Payton, and her 8-year-old son, Jason, come every week.

“We like to come and see the animals,” she said.

She wasn’t talking about the zoo animals that you have to pay to see. She was talking about the ducks and geese that came rushing toward her and the kids as we talked, begging for a scrap of bread.

In a city like Seattle or Boston, with lots of hills and water, a wooded hillside alongside a pond filled with waterfowl wouldn’t be so unusual. In Tucson, it’s precious, especially for the people who live nearby who can’t afford to pay for the zoo, or to play golf, or to travel up into the mountains.

This is one of the arguments championed by Manon Getsi and Lauren McElroy, co-chairs of a new group called Save the Heart of Reid Park that is attempting to stop the zoo from taking over the pond and hill.

“Barnum Hill is one of the most lovely sites in the park,” Getsi said. “It’s the heart of Tucson’s Central Park.”

The comparison to Central Park is something another group of Tucsonans started making about six years ago. The group, called Expand Reid Park, pushed for an expansion into the adjacent golf courses. The Expand Reid Park effort fizzled after it ran face first into the golf lobby. Now, instead of expanding, the park is shrinking.

Tucson's zoo welcomes African wild dogs

Video: Reid Park Zoo

Getsi, McElroy and others didn’t learn of the zoo expansion until Bonnie Wehle wrote a letter to the editor of the Star that was published Nov. 6. Wehle reported in her letter that a parks worker had told her the zoo was planning to drain the pond, raze the hill and construct a building there.

This prompted an angry response from city of Tucson officials, pointing out it isn’t true that the hill will be razed or a zoo building constructed at the site. Of course that, to me and others, is beside the point.

Save the Heart of Reid Park members have appealed to zoo CEO Nancy Kluge, interim parks director Tim Thomure, and City Councilman Steve Kozachik, whose ward the park and zoo are in. Kozachik is not very sympathetic to those who missed the news of the zoo’s planned expansion.

“Since 2014, I’ve participated in Reid Park master plan public presentations,” Kozachik said. “All of them include a westerly expansion of the zoo. They were very well-attended.”

That may be the case, but an expansion of the zoo was not in the language of the sales-tax hike voters approved in 2017, which is what’s paying for the growth.

That 10-year, one-tenth of 1 cent increase was to go “to fund capital improvements, operations, and maintenance at the Gene Reid Park Zoo, and providing for free zoo admission for reserved school groups.”

Formal plans for the expansion weren’t drawn up until after the 2017 election, when the tax increase won by 633 votes, a margin of less than 1% of the votes cast.

The zoo has spent about $1.8 million on plans for the expansion so far, Kluge said, and construction is slated to begin in February.

The expansion is planned to house a new Pathway to Asia exhibit that will feature large enclosures for Malayan tigers. The zoo’s last tiger died in July.

Without the expansion, there’s not enough room for tigers to be housed appropriately, Kluge told me.

Of course, simply not having tigers at the zoo is also an option. So, potentially, is using some other plot of land along the zoo’s perimeter, although Kluge told me that’s not an option — this site was optimal for the new exhibition.

“We had discussions with Parks and Rec,” she said. “It was based on form and function with what would work best.”

Although Barnum Hill, which was built in 1961, would remain standing inside the zoo after construction, the Aleppo pines would be removed because arborists said they show signs of beetle infestation, Kluge said. New trees would be planted.

Thomure told me that potentially a new pond, maybe even a hill, could be built northeast of the north pond, the one that would continue to exist after the planned expansion. Opponents like Getsi and McElroy point to that same area, northwest of the zoo as the only place they would accept for the zoo expansion.

None of this conflict would be occurring, of course, except for the elephant in the room — golf. The city owns twice as much land adjacent to Reid Park and the zoo as they take up together. The only problem is it’s occupied by two golf courses, Randolph and Dell Urich — the prized, money-making possessions among Tucson’s five courses.

As a councilwoman, Mayor Regina Romero went after money-losing courses, but nobody in the city is eager to take the political risk of going after these jewels in the tarnished crown of city golf.

The result: The general public is stuck fighting to keep an acre here or there open and accessible. The sales tax you pay to support the city is not enough to guarantee access to all of Tucson’s Central Park anymore, as money-making ventures gobble up space.

That’s not how it should be, especially in a city supposedly committed to climate justice and a million new trees.

Neither the south duck pond nor Barnum Hill should be colonized by the zoo, because they are unique, precious and freely accessible. But if the zoo’s expansion goes forward, the public needs to be made whole for every acre taken.

There are adjacent golf courses, city parking lots, fenced-off ballfields and other nearby spaces the city can lop off if the expansion happens.

Photos: The Reid Park Zoo is Receiving a Facelift and Expanding

The Reid Park Zoo is making improvements and expanding thanks to a sales tax increase approved by voters in 2017. The entryway has been redone…