Elmwood Park Zoo sits a stone's throw away from Philadelphia in the city of Norristown (it's about a 20 minute drive). The first time I visited, I thought it was a sweet, sleepy little zoo with a neighborhood feel. Lots of locals with children. Play areas to keep the kiddos occupied while the moms sat the gossiped. Sandwiched in a park between a neighborhood and a creek, it also didn't appear to have a lot of room to grow. Then they got a new Director, with a background in the hospitality industry. He brought a new level of energy to the place and began by creating a new integrated habitat for Jaguars, that included Ocelots and today is also home to the zoo's Bald Eagles. Al Zone also focused on upgrading the Giraffe habitat into a year round home with a feeding station. But that was just the beginning.
This past autumn a $20 million dollar expansion of parking and entrance complex complete with a high tech animal welfare center, small animal habitats, entrance area and gift shop opened. In his tenure that zoo's annual attendance has grown from 100,000 in 2015 to a projected 700,000 in 2025. And here's where the zoo is living ahead of itself, especially on days like the Saturday before Easter when hundreds of visitors are flooding the place. In its' present iteration, it's just not big enough to accommodate crowds of this size leading to a less than optimal experience for everyone.
When you look at the zoo over all, you basically have six relatively small focus areas: 1) Giraffe, Zebra & Collard Peccary, 2) The Trail of the Jaguar with a one room aviary abutting it, 3) Small animal house with Red Panda's attached (10 habitats in the building, one way in one way out), 4) A U-Shaped set of outdoor habitats with an elevated boardwalk (one way in one way out) Includes: North American River Otter, Noother American Porcupine (They are obsessed with this species--should be the zoo's mascot), Patagonia Cava, American Alligator, 5) Farm yard (small), a donkey and a couple of goats, a few chickens in a coop, and 6) the last third of the zoo has two habits; one with an older females Elk and the other with an old bull American Bison. This is where the new Asian habitats are slated to go. A keeper confided to me that the animals are too old to relocate and so they're just being maintained awaiting the ground breaking for the Asian habitats. And then there are playgrounds and splash pads and little rides for younger children to play on.
It's the kind of zoo that is delightful to visit when you're there with maybe 50 or even 100 other people, not 500, 600, 700, etc.
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