Let’s build a botanical garden. So we hired one of the country’s preeminent botanical garden firms out of Pittsburgh, and they designed a master plan for the garden, the initial phase. And I went back to the county and I said, “Okay, I’m ready. I need six million bucks.” It… Read More
It was kind of a bad decision that he made that ended up being a good decision in that had we built picnic tables or whatever we would have built on that property 40 years or 50 years ago, that probably all that would’ve ever been there. Now we got… Read More
Let me digress a bit from your zoo to a number of questions that are essentially what’s your opinion?… Read More
And I’ve got this bond issue. We built the reptile house. All that was looking good. And now I want to do another bond issue. (laughs) I want to make some more additions to the zoo. And I went over to that county and to lobby and try to garner… Read More
So I got the staff together and the Zoo Commission, and what are we gonna do?… Read More
You know, I don’t, there’s no bridge, there’s no way to get there. And the zoo is located on the south bank of the river, and it’s relatively flat land. The property that- And we had property over there. The local utility that had given those little acreage of land… Read More
But this one young man walked into my office. He had just like two weeks before graduated from Clemson University, of which I am also a graduate, in horticulture, and he had done an internship at Disney. And I thought, “Well, this kid, he doesn’t, he’d never been to a… Read More
We had all these long, wide sidewalks with steel handrails, and he convinced me to cut down the steel handrails, cut curves in the sidewalk, put in more natural material like split-rail fences and things, and planted it stem to stern. And within about two years, I was getting more… Read More
Well, we’re not called Riverbanks Zoo for anything. We’re on the banks of a very big river with no bridge, no way to get over there, back then. Plus Mehrtens spent all of the money on the zoo in its location and wouldn’t spend any money across the river. So… Read More
Can you tell me something about botanical garden and the horticulture and how the zoo was involved in that?… Read More
Yes. In addition to being involved in the AZA, I also was a member of the World Zoo and Aquarium Association, WAZA. Ultimately became chair of that board as well, which was not a lot of fun. But I went to a WASA conference. I want to say Antwerp, but… Read More
Was in the middle of this massive city, tall buildings all around. And you walk in, and a small zoo, few acres, and you’re in an oasis. And they did something I had never seen before, which was vertical horticulture. They had planted walls, and it was just the most… Read More
And then seven or eight years later, we did this. So that became my philosophy for the zoo. We were talking about master planning and the zoo. Read More
Can you tell me something?… Read More
They say sometimes the zoo is a zoological garden. Read More
We put major exhibits in the four corners, or the four points of what is actually a large oval. And those exhibits are all air-conditioned and large. So on a very hot day, a visitor can come to the zoo and stay in air-conditioning most of their visit if they… Read More
Not, oh, do I love this reptile house, but how am I getting there, and where am I gonna have lunch and where are the bathrooms?… Read More
And I became very obsessed with that sort, in a positive way with that concept, and it was totally new to me. CLR taught me a lot about how people visit the zoo. So what I did after maybe 18 months or two years at the most, I had CLR… Read More
Why?… Read More
My philosophy with that was based upon the fact that I was a public institution in a relatively small southern city with no history of philanthropy, which meant that I had to rely on bond issues for capital money, which meant that I had to rely on elected officials who… Read More