Local
Panel approves 20-year strategy to expand, improve National Zoo
November 7, 2008
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| An orangutan crosses the “O-Line” at the National Zoo. The 119-year old facility has been approved for a billion dollar overhaul. (Emily J. Reynolds/or the Examiner) |
The Smithsonian Institution’s long-range master plan for the nation’s second-oldest zoo features a three-station aerial tram running the length of its 163 acres, a 1,128-space parking garage at the midpoint entry, a total overhaul of zoo infrastructure, seven new animal exhibits, and new plazas and visitor amenities throughout.
The National Capital Planning Commission approved the master plan, estimated to cost between $900 million and $1.1 billion, unanimously and virtually without comment.
“I believe what you have before you is a very sound road map,” said John Berry, the zoo’s executive director.
The 119-year-old zoo is widely considered out-of-date. Much of its infrastructure dates back a half-century or more. Parking is scarce. Exhibits and amenities are too tightly clustered. Movement throughout is difficult.
The commission staff agreed, stating in a report that the “overall visitor experience does not meet the expectations of the ‘national’ name or the Smithsonian standards.”
The approved master plan increases exhibit space from 35 to 47 acres by reclaiming surface parking lots. With the construction of the proposed midpoint garage, the number of parking spaces would soar from 868 to 1,285.
The Smithsonian, at the NCPC’s request, eliminated from the plans a proposed 300-space underground garage slated for the Connecticut Avenue entrance. D.C. planning director Harriet Tregoning, in written comments, questioned why the zoo would add so much new parking but offer “limited and vague strategies and commitment to encourage walking, bicycling and transit-use by staff and visitors.”
“I have to say I did agree with that because the zoo is Metro-accessible and attracts an awful lot of visitors who could take Metro or public transportation but don’t,” said Lee Brian Reba, a Woodley Park advisory neighborhood commissioner who lives steps away from the zoo.
Neighbors’ top concerns remain parking, traffic and zoo-related trash, Reba said, but the master plan represents a giant leap forward.
Many of the individual projects described vaguely in the blueprint are years away and heavily dependent on private donations, Smithsonian officials said. The aerial tram, a central feature, would provide visitors an alternative means of traversing the zoo’s steep terrain, which Berry compared to walking the stairs of a 16-story office building.
