Zoo-hoo

Dallas Observer | Julie Lyons:

“Dick Geiger, for one, is sick of the Dallas Zoo’s reputation as the ugly stepsister to the slick, kid-friendly Fort Worth Zoo. ... Geiger, a Dallas lawyer and board member of the Dallas Zoological Society, visited town hall meetings to drum up support for the zoo in the city’s upcoming bond package. And if he gets his way, the Dallas Zoo will be transformed into a bona fide major attraction in the next five or six years. Yes, we’ve heard this before.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

We sure have. In the early 1990s, the Dallas Zoo was transformed with the opening of the Wilds of Africa, a huge expansion of the zoo with state-of-the-art features. Trouble was, no one gave any thought at all to the kids. It wasn't just that the Wilds of Africa wasn't kid-friendly. It was actually kid-hostile.

Starting from the brand-new entrance plaza, a huge expanse of unshaded concrete. Arrive on a summer's day, with a baby stroller, and you are immediately drawn to the garden walk around the left side of the plaza, in hopes of a little shade and something of interest for the kids to see as you walk. Get to the end of the walk and you are faced with several steps back down to the plaza. Turn around that baby stroller! Backtrack. What were the landscapers thinking?

The kids are eager to see the baboons. They are in an expansive exhibit, but with only a couple of small viewing windows. Both crowded. Your child impatiently waits his turn, only to find when he makes it up to the window that it's too high for him to see through. Parents find it's the first of lots of lifting, not just to see the animals, but even to get a drink of water. Did the architect think that only adults were going to visit the zoo?

You get to the prized gorilla exhibit. You look and look but see no gorillas. You ask. The gorillas are all inside. You ask if there's a way inside for visitors. No. Do any of the closed-circuit televisions show the animals inside? No, the animals need their privacy. What? Animals are aware of hidden cameras now?

So, you take the nature walk. Again and again, the animals are hiding. You can see the okapi if you hold the children up and over far enough to look around that wall. Your arms quickly tire of the routine. Worse, the walk doesn't go through much of the Wilds of Africa at all. You have to ride the monorail. For an extra fee. There's no way to avoid it if you want to see the animals. But even that's a lottery. The animals may not be visible during your monorail circuit. Don't ask to pause for that okapi to step out from behind those trees. The monorail doesn't stop. Buy another ticket and hope for better luck next time.

Your arms are tired. The kids are cranky because they didn't see any animals. So much for the Wilds of Africa. You head over to the old zoo, now called Zoo North. The first site is the flamingo pond. You can't miss it. No screening walls or hedges. It's surrounded by a railing of the most ingenious kid-friendly design. Kids can see without being lifted. Kids can get right to the front without fear of being crushed by the big people behind them. Ingenious, really, a simple architectural style known to 1930s' zoo designers but apparently lost to modern landscapers. And the flamingos themselves don't seem to mind all the visitors. The kids love it. The old zoo just might save the day after all. If only the modern zoo designers don't use that $40 million bond package to screw it up, too.