With 90 years of history behind it, Brookfield Zoo Chicago is looking to the future — with a plan to redevelop hundreds of acres of property and expand westward.
As part of it ambitious “Next Century Plan,” announced last week, the organization intends to spend $500 million over the next 15 years to create a plan that upends the traditional zoo experience.
The biggest change comes to the western side of the zoo’s campus, which will become the home of its new “immersive ecoregions.” Unlike a traditional zoo experience, where guests see animals in habitats organized by species, Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s ecoregion habitats will bring together animal species that live together in the wild, replicating their natural environment and allowing guests to see how wild ecosystems function.
The ecoregions, which will take up a majority of the zoo’s campus, will be connected by the underground Savannah Passage, a half-mile corridor that will allow zoo staff to move animals between environments on a daily basis.
“Our goal there, really, is two-fold. It’s really to make the most enriching, dynamic environment that we can for the animals that [will] maintain optimal health and optimal wellbeing, as well as providing them the opportunity to have variety in their daily routines, to be engaged within the landscape and the environment around them,” zoo President and CEO Michael Adkesson said in a phone call last week. “It also keeps it exciting for our guests, so it lets us better recreate that kind of immersive experience of going on a safari or out onto a track and not necessarily knowing for sure what’s going to be right around the corner.”
The ecoregions will feature habitats inspired by 15 environments across the globe, such as the African Savannah, the Himalayas and the Pacific coast of the Americas. The 35-acre “Gateway to Africa” habitat, whose development will kick off the second phase of the plan, will link four ecoregions based the continent; the ecoregions’ development will last through the third phase of the plan.
In addition to the new ecoregion habitats, the zoo’s plans include three other “key zones” for the park: the conservation campus, the wildlife discovery area and the historical core.
The conservation campus, which will be located on the park’s south end after it is built toward the end of the 15-year plan, will be “a hub for scientists, educators and conservationists” that guests can visit to see examples of live conservation research and learn about Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s conservation efforts.
“Conservation is at the core of everything we do here, and zoos have evolved so much over the last hundred years, from places that were created to just be a place for human entertainment with animals to places that, today, house some of the world’s most endangered animals and conduct some of the most important research and science with those species and play an enormous role in conservation,” Adkesson said.
He named the zoo’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which has studied dolphins in Sarasota, Florida, since 1970, as one of Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s “hallmark” conservation programs.
“It’s the longest running conservation research study of a marine mammal species anywhere on the globe,” he said. “That program, for us, is tied so tightly to what we believe with our dolphins here at the zoo, and our dolphins here at the zoo have been able to help refine everything from satellite tags to other instruments to help develop models that are able to be deployed on wild dolphins, and the information we gain from wild dolphins has helped with the healthcare and medical care of our animals here at the zoo.”
The new wildlife discovery zone, located on the east side of the zoo, will feature recreational and interactive experiences for guests. The biggest addition to the zone will be an open-air amphitheater that the zoo will use for programming, from educational lessons to musical performances, like the zoo’s Roaring Nights summer concert series. The zone will also feature a permanent butterfly house so guests can learn about the colorful insects year-round.
The historical core, as the name suggests, will maintain the zoo’s existing historic features, like its iconic gates on the north and south side of the park and its carousel at the center of the zoo’s campus.
With all of the changes coming to the zoo through 2039, Adkesson said he struggled to pick just one as his favorite.
“It’s like asking to pick a favorite animal or a favorite child. I think we are all so excited about everything within this plan right now. It’s been a real challenge towards the end of the plan to really prioritize what we wanted to see come online first, and I think that we’ve landed in a great order,” he said. “Right now, our natural excitement is kind of falling to what comes next, and so, as we look to Tropical Forest” — a $66 million project leading the first phase of the Next Century Plan — “opening this coming summer with a new outdoor habitat for our gorillas and orangutans, we’re tremendously excited about that.”
The changes will be split into four phases, the first of which is already underway, that will change the way guests experience the zoo and open doors for new kinds of learning opportunities. Officials said they zoo has already secured nearly $200 million in funding for the plan.
For more information about the plan, including access to a 45-page executive summary, go to Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s website.