Some of the first things I addressed when I entered the Cincinnati Zoo, some of the things that bothered me a lot, the zoo had a lot of concrete, had a lot of tarmac, very few planted areas. And over the years they had blacktopped a lot of ground area for wider walkways, walkways that were actually essentially too wide. A lot of concrete stone walls. I just wanted a softer zoo. My dream of the Cincinnati Zoo was to be an oasis in the city, a green area where people would come and not really realize where they were and feel very relaxed. And the only way you can really do that, accomplish that, is by getting rid of a lot of the harder materials and going into more natural. We started with wooden walkways rather than concrete. Rails, we eliminated, we used moating instead of fencing.
