A clerical error has slowed negotiations between Jackson and the group city officials hope will take over the Jackson Zoological Park.
Since January, the Lumumba administration has been in talks with ZoOceanarium, an international firm they’re backing to manage the West Jackson attraction.
Talks were expected to wrap up in March. However, negotiations were on hold last week as the city and ZoOceanarium awaited the completion of an audit of zoo finances.
“I’m hoping it will be done very soon,” Jackson Chief Administrative Officer Robert Blaine said. “I haven’t spoken to the auditing firm recently. My expectation is that we should be receiving the audit in the very near future.”
In October, the Jackson City Council awarded a $40,000 contract to Bruno and Tervalon LLP, a New Orleans-based group to audit the park’s finances.
The report was due back in December, but auditors were not given a notice to proceed with the work until earlier this year, Blaine said.
A notice to proceed is the official documentation contractors need to begin a project on behalf of the government.
“There was a miscommunication between our financial team, our finance department and the auditing firm,” Blaine said. “They hadn’t received a letter from the city to initiate the work. We thought that it had already been communicated.”
The notice was issued in February.
Blaine said the results of the audit would not impact ZoOceanarium’s desire to come to the city. and said officials with the international firm had already visited Jackson to tour the 100-year-old zoo facility.
“It’s more of an understanding of how the zoo got into the financial situation its in, so they can understand how to untangle that knot,” he said.
Meanwhile, the park continues to hemorrhage visitors.
Through the end of March, the zoo attracted just 18,736 visitors, down 30 percent for the same time in 2018.
Interim Director Dave Wetzel said a number of factors contributed to the decrease, including poor weather and a lack of money for marketing and new attractions, the park’s surroundings and the status of the zoo’s management.
“The weather has not played nice with us this year. A lot of cold dreary days and long rain events, particularly on weekends and holidays are the primary reason,” he said.
The zoo is located at 2918 W. Capitol St., in the heart of west Jackson. It is surrounded by blighted properties, including numerous burnt out and boarded up houses.
A report released to the Sun in 2017 showed that the park’s location was a major deterrent to potential donors and attendance.
Between 2003 and 2017, attendance dropped by approximately 80,000 people. For fiscal year 2018, it dropped even more, to around 76,000.
Revenues dropped as a result. To cut costs, zoo staff has been cut to bare bones, with just 25 full-time employees. “If we were fully staffed, full-time would need to be around 35 to 40 individuals,” Wetzel said.
The park has also scaled back its advertising budget and is relying on donors to underwrite 100 percent of special events costs.
ZoOceanarium promises to bring a wealth of knowledge and new resources, and potentially some new animals, to the beleaguered park.
“They have zoos all over the world,” Blaine said. “They have resources we don’t have.”
He pointed to several high-profile projects ZoOceanarium has been involved in, from the Biodome project in Dubai to a new aquarium being built in St. Louis.
In November 2017, Lodging Hospitality Management (LHM) announced that ZoOceanarium had been brought on to manage the aquarium once it opens this summer.
LHM is constructing the 120,000-square-foot attraction. Officials with the company couldn’t be reached for comment.
The Biodome project included designing and constructing biodomes in Dubai. The project recreates rainforests, with climate-controlled domes housing thousands of animal and plant species that would otherwise not be able to survive in the city’s desert climate.
ZoOceanarium has offices in Dubai, Singapore and the United States.
