SANTA ANA : Zoo Expansion Plan Gets Council OK

The City Council this week unanimously approved a 10-year, $10-million expansion plan for the Santa Ana Zoo.

The expansion, which involves all 20 acres of zoo property, will give the zoo a South American theme and will include tropical rain forests, a dry forest and a desert savanna linked by a replica of the Amazon River, city officials said.

The first phase of the master plan calls for the construction of a 34,000-square-foot primate exhibit. The $800,000 exhibit will be home to black howling monkeys and capybaras, which are 100-pound members of the rodent family.

Work on the exhibit is expected to begin later this year and will be the zoo’s first major addition in more than 10 years.

Other expansion features include additional open-air exhibits, a restaurant at the north end of the zoo, more restrooms and food and gift stands, an education building, administrative offices and maintenance facilities.

The plan also calls for the entrance of the zoo to be moved from the south end to the north end so it will be more visible to pedestrians near the Santa Ana Freeway and 1st Street.

A task force of zoo officials, Friends of the Santa Ana Zoo and city planners, engineers and department heads spent 14 months creating plans for the expansion.

“I think the zoo is going to present itself extremely well to the community of Orange County,” said Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young.

The zoo, just off the Santa Ana Freeway at 1st Street in Prentice Park, is maintained and operated by the city. The zoo was built in the 1950s and attracted 240,000 visitors last year.