Zoo gets $500K gift for capital campaign
The Louisville Zoo has received a $500,000 donation to its $10.4 million capital campaign, with the money coming from the Goldring Family Foundation and the Sazerac Co. distilling operations that the family controls.
The gift brings the campaign's total cash and pledges to around $6.6 million, said Zoo Director John Walczak, with the hope to raise the $10.4 goal by the end of 2015.
He said the zoo plans to start construction this winter on the first two projects to be funded — renovation of the elephant exhibit and developing a new penguin exhibit. They are expected to be completed next summer.
Other major gifts so far have included $1 million from both the James Graham Brown Foundation and from the Friends of the Zoo and $680,000 from the Ogle Foundation.
Zoo officials want to freshen the zoo's offerings and like to add at least one major new feature every five years or so.
The zoo recently adopted a new master plan that proposes the long-range development of: a new sculpture garden and playground at the African Outpost; renovation of the lemur exhibit; new classroom and educational-program space; and an upgrade to benches, landscaping, pavement and other amenities and infrastructure throughout the zoo.
The last previous master plan was adopted in 1999; it recommended some major projects, including the $13 million Gorilla Forest that opened in 2002 and the $25 million arctic-themed Glacier Run complex.
In addition to perhaps funding some of the development proposed in the new master plan, the projects targeted with the $10.4 million current campaign include:
• A $3 million renovation of the elephant exhibit — the zoo currently has two aging elephants — to exceed recently toughened Association of Zoos and Aquariums elephant-holding standards.
To help meet the new standards, columns will be erected around the elephant yard's perimeter, serving as an additional safety separation between the elephants and viewers.
Plans also call for nearly doubling the size of the elephant yard to 22,000 square feet. And the work will include developing a wide walkway from the elephant exhibit to a nearby oasis/outpost.
In addition, several walls and gates within the exhibit will be constructed, intended as protected-access separations between keepers and the creatures. The new standards, developed with safety of keepers in mind, are meant to minimize the times that staff and elephants share the same space.
• A miniature fairy penguin exhibit costing about $680,000 near the zoo's Islands Plaza. The animals are native to Australia. The Ogle Foundation grant will pay for the exhibit.
The Goldring family, which owns and operates the Sazerac Company, has an office in Louisville, and its Kentucky facilities include the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, the Barton 1792 Distillery in Bardstown, and Glenmore Distillery in Owensboro. Sazerac has more than 1,000 employees in Kentucky.
So far the "silent" portion of the capital fundraising campaign, which began nearly two years ago, has focused primarily on foundations and individuals with a history of zoo giving. Walczak said the campaign probably will be opened to the public sometime next year.
Reporter Sheldon S. Shafer can be reached at (502) 582-7089. Follow him on Twitter at @sheldonshafer.