Wednesday, April 12, 2000

Animal giants get more leg room

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Parking lot turned into elephant play yard

BY Mike Pulfer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        By human standards, the Cincinnati zoo's newest remodeling is sort of like giving up the driveway for a super-duper yard for the kids.

A 60,000-gallon wading pool takes shape in the shadow of the historic elephant house. (Glenn Hartong photos) | ZOOM |

        The kids, in this case, are four Asian elephants, a Maasai giraffe and at least two okapi (a smaller giraffe relative, with shorter neck). There are more to come.

        The driveway was a 160-space parking lot that got gobbled up for a 4.3-acre, $6 million remodeling project.

        The home: the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden's renovated, expanded, landscaped and generally gussied up elephant house, opening May 6. The zoo's giraffe, which has been staying in California since construction began, will return in time for the opening.

        The new attraction — now known as the Schott-Unnewehr Vanishing Giants exhibit — includes an outdoor animal environment with a sand-pit play area for elephants and a 60,000-gallon wading pool with a waterfall and filter.

        “It's a much better environment for the animals,” said Jack Huelsman, associate director at the zoo. “Elephants like to play in the sand, (and) people standing outside (near the pool) might get a shower every now and then. Elephants like to do that.”

        Outside, where the animals are expected to spend most of their days, they'll have four to five times as much space as they had before, he said.

        Inside, they'll have up to three times as much space in the viewing area, plus a new “bedroom area” closed to the public. The new concrete floors are heated, and their food now comes up an elevator from the remodeled basement.

        There are special stalls for safer medical checks.

        The outdoor demonstration/show area has been reversed, so zoo visitors in aluminum bleachers can see the duck pond and nearby landscaping as a backdrop. The building now has two separate people entrances: one for the elephants, one for the giraffes and okapi.

        There are several outdoor viewing areas, a new food-service area on the west side of the building and a pair of copper-shingled gazebos for shelter, private parties and an outdoor gift shop.

        McCollow & Associates, Evanston, developed architectural designs.

More space has been created for the zoo's elephants | ZOOM |

        Walkways built from tumbled paver stones meander through the three separate outdoor zones and add a natural look that blends with the landscaping.

        Dave Ehrlinger, the zoo's director of horticulture, said the project called for more than 300 varieties of plants, including tall grasses and shrubs that lend an African look.

        According to zoo plans, the exhibit ultimately will have three giraffes, four elephants and as many as four okapi, Mr. Huelsman said. The zoo's fifth elephant, Sabu, father of baby Ganesh, is in Louisville on breeding loan. It's unlikely he'll return, says Mike Dulaney, Cincinnati's general curator, because two adult males cannot live in the same exhibit.

        The elephant house, completed in 1906 and now on the National Register of Historic Places, has reinforced concrete domes that loom over the zoo, making the building a focal point.

        Its color theme has been changed, from all white to reddish browns. Burnt-sienna ceramic tiles decorate the curved walls under the domes. Entrance doorways, which had been “modernized” in the 1950s, are being restored. “We're going back to the way it was,” Mr. Huelsman said. That means mahogany wood frames with glass insets and custom bronze elephant door pulls.

        Inside, where the public steps into shallow viewing rooms barely 20 feet wide, “The animals get the preponderance of the space,” Mr. Huelsman said.

        That's a national trend and a flip-flop of the old idea where zoos plucked animals out of their environment and dropped them into ours, usually in small, dull cages and dusty outdoor yards.

        The trend today, says Dr. Michael Hutchins, director of conservation and science at the American Zoo and Aquarium Association in Silver Spring, Md., is room to roam in an area that mimics the animals' native habitat. In the Cincinnati zoo's case, it is a sandy, rolling savannah with plantings native to Africa and Asia or hardy North American relatives.

        Dr. Hutchins has been keeping his eye on 10 elephant compounds across the country in various stages of renovation.

        “It's not an immersion exhibit (one that plunges both visitor and animal into the animal's environment), but it's close,” he said. “I saw the exhibit, and to a certain extent it does give the impression that you're on the savannah, watching wild animals.

        “Anything that can give people an appreciation of the animal's environment, is good. Ed Maruska as director made some good decisions along the way. I'd say he was ahead of the rest of the industry on this project.”

        Jim Knippenberg of the Enquirer contributed to this report.

Polar bears are next to get improved lodging at the zoo

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