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Volume 2, No. 8. May 10, 2002

New Arrivals

It’s a multi-habitat exhibit!
The St. Louis Zoo in St. Louis, Missouri, announces the arrival of River’s Edge, April 27, 2002. Measurements: 10 acres, four continents represented, 11 species, three interpretive outposts, one aquarium, one eatery and one conference center. Delivered by Dave Mason & Associates (architects), Jones & Jones (conceptual design).

The zoo’s marketing team had worked up a perfect script to celebrate the opening of the third and final phase of its $27 million “crown jewel” exhibit which uses a mythical river as its theme. The zoo’s new President and CEO Jeffrey Bonner was supposed to oversee a ceremonial pouring of the waters at the Saturday morning public opening, but Mother Nature stepped in to do the honors instead. “We had a monsoon that day,” said Kevin Mills, the zoo’s director of marketing. The whole celebratory festivals, which featured local performers and artisans representing international cultures, had to be moved to the various indoor locations.

Despite the deluge, 4,000 people visited the zoo that day, and on Sunday when the sky cleared and the artists moved their acts outdoors, 23,000 visitors showed up. The numbers rose even higher last week as word-of-mouth marketing kicked in.

The zoo has given its community a treasure of an exhibit, one where the barriers between animals and visitors seem nonexistent. “This is an exhibit where you can get closer to the animals than ever before,” Mills said. “And through your suspension of belief, you can achieve a thrill thinking those animals could reach out and touch you, even if you can’t touch them.” The zoo has been marketing Rivers Edge with such slogans as “You’re not at the zoo, you’re in it,” “How close is too close” and “Keep repeating: it’s only a zoo; it’s only a zoo.”

While the general public is enamored with the seamless Asian elephant exhibit and the underwater viewing of swimming hippopotamus, the zoo has created a pioneering conceptual standard for the whole zoo industry. Rather than put the focus on species or geographic habitats, Rivers Edge looks at a variety of animals who live along the rivers in South America, Africa, Asia and North America. The trail encounters seven cascading waterfalls and moseys past capybaras, bush dogs, giant anteaters, black rhinoceros, warthog, carmine bee-eaters, spotted hyenas, cheetahs, and dwarf mongoose, in addition to the elephants and hippos. “There’s a commonality of these species which live along the world’s rivers,” Mills said. “This is an attempt to describe how closely related human beings are to that wildlife and those wild places, because people congregate along those waterways.”

St. Louis, sitting at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and innately linked with riverboat lore, is a natural for such a message. And natural is the keyword to the St. Louis Zoo’s latest achievement. No wonder Mother Nature wanted to take part in the ceremonial pouring of the waters.