Swanky ‘San Simian’ Planned for Chimpanzees at L.A. Zoo

With a price tag of $4.5 million, it’s a home construction project of Bel-Air scale. Three stories high. Sleeping quarters nearly the size of a basketball court. An open-air penthouse for stargazing--no need for a motorized skylight. Separate quarters for the help and sprawling grounds with an amphitheater, a tumbling stream, pools and a grove of palm trees.

On the down side, the entire family will share a community bedroom and the daytime view will be a steady parade of paparazzi.

But that’s probably not going to faze Toto and Bonnie and Johari and the rest of the 14 chimpanzees at the Los Angeles Zoo who will inhabit a vastly improved habitat--dare we suggest San Simian--when their new digs are completed next year.

Groundbreaking for the chimpanzee project--the first phase in the planned construction of a $15 million Great Ape Forest at the zoo--was held Thursday outside the squalid and cramped pen where the chimps currently live.

Plans shown off to city dignitaries and the media call for a five-fold expansion in the exhibit space devoted to the chimps, who have long been favorites among zoo-goers. The improved display, a key component in the city’s long-term plans for upgrading the zoo, will replace concrete pavement with natural grass and trees and substitute the current chain-link fence with glass walls that will allow the chimps to interact with zoo guests--even play pranks on them. “The chimps can come right up to the glass and the humans can come up and you’re literally face to face,’ said Richard Klink, zoo project manager.

Zoo officials say the project, funded through a combination of public money and private donations, will replace decrepit facilities with a modern habitat that is more humane for the chimps and educational for their visitors.

“The current exhibit teaches you nothing about chimpanzees and their natural environment,” said zoo spokeswoman Lora LaMarca. “They’re on a rock, and chimpanzees don’t live on a rock.”

For the chimpanzees, ranging in age from seven months to 42 years, the switch will be a bit like moving from a ramshackle fixer-upper to the Spelling mansion.

The chimps now spend their days scrambling on an exposed terrain that bakes in the summer heat.The chimps’ sleeping quarters indoors are two barred rooms indoors that resemble nothing so much as undersized jail cells.

The price tag of the new house more closely matches that for the A-list Westside show biz crowd than for a bunch of tree-swinging rogues whose idea of entertainment is tossing wilted food at each other.

“Four and a half million could buy you a beautiful 10,000-square-foot place in Bel-Air. Nice. Nice. Nice,” said Cecelia Waeschle, a Beverly Hills real estate agent. “Except [the chimpanzees] probably don’t have the marble entryways and granite countertops.”

A couple of recent Westside sales: producer Peter Guber’s purchase of a five-acre Bel-Air estate for close to $4 million and the $5 million sale of the former Holmby Hills home--with eight beds and eight baths--of singer Neil Diamond. “You could get probably an acre of land, a relatively new house, say 5 years old, in excess of 10,000 square feet, a pool, gated driveway, marble kitchen and bathrooms,” said real estate agent Stephen Shapiro of Beverly Hills.

Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo emphasized that the cost of the chimpanzees’ quarters is reasonable for the the well-being of the primates and to bring the zoo into line with a more modern philosophy that stresses learning rather than simply gawking.

Instead of Bel-Air style gates to keep out the looky-loos, the new simian display will feature hollowed trees called “howdy logs” to allow children and chimps to meet inside, separated only by a panel of glass.

The only ones involved who cannot be polled about the planned new digs, of course, are the chimps who will call them home.

“They’re happy now, but what does an animal know?” said Klink, the project manager. “He doesn’t know there’s bigger and better things coming.”

5 Bdrms, Tram Vu

In the real estate biz, there’s nothing like those “comps.” Here is a look at how the chimps’ abode might stack up against one recently sold L.A. mansion.

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Neighborhood

Chimp House: Griffith Park

Mansion: Holmby Hills

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Bedrooms

Chimp House: 1 communal and 4 individual

Mansion: 8

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Baths

Chimp House: 0

Mansion: 8

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View

Chimp House: Tramway, tourists

Mansion: Trees

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Size of house

Chimp House: 3,800 square feet

Mansion: 9,034 square feet

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Cost

Chimp House: $4.5 million

Mansion: $5 million

Researched by Times staff writers KEN ELLINGWOOD and RUTH RYON