Creating a new zoo from scratch

Sacramento Zoo moves to a 21st-century campus

by Joe Kleiman

In the 1920s, Sacramento, California’s capital city, was booming. Newly constructed canals resulted in greatly increased agriculture yields. Goods were shipped via two major railroad lines that converged in the city as well as along the newly completed Victory Highway. It was the first road to travel coast to coast and cut right through the middle of the city. Sacramento’s growth was also fueled by the establishment of multiple military bases in the region in the aftermath of the First World War, including one of the country’s first air bases.

Between 1920 and 1930, the population of Sacramento County jumped from 91,000 to 142,000. In 1927, during the midst of this economic and population boom, the Sacramento Zoo opened in a small 4-acre corner of the newly established William Land Park. It exhibited a menagerie of forty animals, including local wildlife, as well as exotic birds and monkeys, all obtained through the acquisition of local private collections.

The first expansion

By the early 1960s, Sacramento County’s population had increased to 503,000. The zoo was outdated by the standards of the day and planned on replacing the cages that had held its animals for forty years with more natural, open enclosures. To do this successfully and grow, the zoo needed to expand – which it did in 1961 through an acquisition of ten-and-a- half acres.

Much remained unchanged until the 2010s when Mary Healy (interviewed in 2014 for an InPark article on proposed legislation impacting the state’s zoos) oversaw the construction of a new veterinary hospital at the zoo along with red pandas, river otters, and thick-billed parrots (an endangered species and the only parrot native to the United States). One of the last major projects completed under her oversight was an expanded giraffe habitat that opened in 2010. By the time of Healy’s leadership, zoos were undergoing a significant transition in operations and outreach. The concept of seeing exotic animals up close had been replaced by conservation messaging and initiatives; enclosures had evolved into “habitats,” with enrichment programs for animals and the use of operant conditioning training, leading animals to volunteer for veterinary procedures.

The transformation

In 2015, Kyle Burks was named Zoo Director. When he departed three years later to become Managing Director of the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, he left behind the legacy of a $75 million 20-year master plan set to transform the zoo’s 14.5-acre campus.

Enter Jason Jacobs, with leadership experience at major zoos in Los Angeles and Tucson. Under his leadership, habitats were transformed, with moats and protective netting removed and replaced by giant windows. On a tour of the zoo, Jacobs showed me both meerkats running alongside window frames and a lioness inches away from awed school children. “We filled out our moats and installed windows, expanding the habitat size,” he pointed out. “The animals have gotten accustomed to them and mostly ignore the guests, unless there’s something of interest.” As Jacobs introduces me to Mo, an okapi born at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, children attending the zoo’s camp program show up on the viewing platform with the mission of observing Mo and determining how the different parts of his body operate. There’s an air of excitement among the kids. “The zoo is about making connections,” he adds. “It’s what I love about what I do.”

The move

By 2020, the population of Sacramento County had jumped exponentially to 1.6 million, while the population of the Sacramento Metropolitan Area, which also includes the three neighboring counties of Yuba, Placer, and El Dorado, is currently 2.25 million. In 2023, 523,000 guests visited the zoo, which had been experiencing a steady increase in attendance year after year.

“We have a problem in that we are an undersized zoo in a large and growing market,” shares Jacobs. I looked at a number of options, including expanding further into Land Park, but determined that the costs that were allocated for updating the current zoo in the master plan could also cover our expenses for the first stage of a brand-new zoo.”

Jacobs entered talks with the City of Sacramento, landlord of the current zoo property, but, as he says, “Each time we had a potential location, something would happen and suddenly it would no longer be available.”

Stepping in to fill the need was the City of Elk Grove, a growing community on the southern edge of the county, bounded by an Apple technology campus to the north and a tribal casino to the south. “Having the casino and the new casino-related properties under development, including a hotel, that border the zoo, those are big projects that play an important role in developing our community,” says Jason Behrmann, Elk Grove’s City Manager. “We feel that these kinds of projects, which also include the zoo, bring more people to visit our community, which then benefits the smaller, independently owned businesses such as boutique shops, wineries, and local breweries.”

By 2021, an exclusive negotiating agreement was in place between the city and the following year, an MOU was in place. A March 2024 study by the firm Applied Economics predicted that attendance at the new zoo would be 900,000 in its first year of operation, and that the total economic benefit to Elk Grove would be $128 million over the first five years of operation. It is expected that the zoo will see visitation from as far away as Nevada and Oregon and that visitors are anticipated to come from the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California, each of which are home to some of the nation’s leading zoos. “This is going to be not only new, but different and unique,” says Behrmann. “We anticipate people traveling a distance just to experience our new zoo.”

The vision

“Our goal is to create impactful experiences,” says Jacobs. “What we are planning in Elk Grove will do that in ways that have rarely been done to this extent in a zoo.” Those experiences would use time-honored techniques from the field of themed entertainment design to create immersive storytelling environments that parlay a strong conservation message.

To sell the kind of impact the new zoo would have, the team at Mangolin Creative was engaged to create conceptual artwork and develop new experiences for the new campus. “Every part of conceptual art must be from the guest’s eye,” shares Morgan Richardson, Mangolin’s Founding Partner. “We want to expressly capture the individual moments of excitement in an attraction. The primary goal of the artwork is not to make it look nice; it is to communicate the concept. The public, the politicians and the funders all need to envision it being there.”

SH|R Studios, a landscape architecture firm specializing in zoo design, is the master planner and lead designer on the project. The new zoo will sit on approximately 100 acres and be built over four phases. The price tag for the first phase is $302 million for both the zoo campus and external infrastructure leading to it. Much of the cost is being handled through city funds and municipal bond sales, with the zoo responsible for $50 million, currently being raised through donations and $30 million from regional partnerships.

Jason Hill, partner at SH|R, explains that the first phase will include the Green Corridor and the African savanna. “The Green Corridor acts like Main Street at a Disney park, funneling guests through the center of the property,” says Hill. It will feature animals that are key to the conservation message and create a loop with the African savanna.

“We want traffic to flow easily,” says Hill. “We looked at the different attendance patterns at the current zoo campus and determined what would be needed during peak visitation to prevent pathways from getting clogged and where to place stations that people can stop, rest, and learn more about the animals.”

Heat is a major concern as the Sacramento Valley continues to see summer temperature increases year after year. The new zoo will feature foliage indigenous to California to compensate for the frequent droughts in the region. “We will have an African savanna,” says Hill, “but it won’t be African grasses. We will feature native California grasses that are similar in composition and create the proper feel for being on a safari.” The zoo will have numerous sustainable water features as well, which will help in cooling both animals and guests.

Animals will be selected based on those best suited for the temperature variation of the Elk Grove site – cool and rainy in winter, extreme heat in summer. “Not all the animals at our current location will be moving to Elk Grove,” says Jacobs.

“A number of them will be relocated to other zoos, like the chimpanzees that moved out last year. We’re also starting to introduce new animals to the existing zoo which will have homes in our Elk Grove location, including the white

rhinoceros. We’ll still be at our existing location for the next five years and this gives the community the opportunity to meet and learn about the residents of the new zoo before we move.”

Future phases

Phase two will feature California animals, and the zoo will have the capability to use this space to care for injured and orphaned animals from around the region. The city and the zoo have been in discussions with Wilton Rancheria, the Native American nation that owns the nearby Sky River Casino, about using the California section to tell the story of indigenous stewardship of natural resources, through both interpretive elements and live storytelling. California will be followed by phase three, a permanent administration building, and finally, phase four, an Australasia section. “There will not be any polar exhibits,” shares Jacobs. “We are respecting the needs of our animals and making sure they can acclimate to the conditions.” Specific opening dates have not yet been determined, as construction of each phase is dependent on fundraising. Phase one is expected to be completed by 2030.

When asked what he was most excited about at the new zoo, Hill said, “There will be a lodge built along the savanna. You’ll be able to get off work, go to the zoo with your friends or coworkers, grab one of the local beers, and sit on the deck, watching the sun set over the savanna as the animals all gather at the watering hole. There’s very few places you can do something like that outside of Africa.” •