There was a sense of cohesiveness about the organizations and a lot of that was done through landscaping. So we made a commitment that we came back home, we put all our notes together, we made a commitment that we were gonna make the Cincinnati Zoo a botanical garden. Not… Read More
You don’t even see a building, you only see an entryway that’s landscaped. And we did that with the gorilla exhibit. We essentially covered the old lion house with stonework and outdoor caging. So eventually you began to see the loss of a lot of buildings. The zoo over a… Read More
So that was some of the major changes in the zoo, and they were the ones that were received best by our visiting public too. When I was in Melbourne, I was fascinated by the Melbourne Zoo that they had a special floral festival. So every spring now, and it’s… Read More
What were the top items that you wanted to address or enhance when you first walked in?… Read More
What was on your list?… Read More
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… Read More
The condition of the zoo when I stepped in was still, still bad. There were attempts- I think over the period of years of Bill’s administration, he was just trying to put it back together to make it an institution that was functional. So he was repairing old buildings, but… Read More
We have what we call the blue laws. All businesses in Cincinnati when I started, were closed on Sunday by law. So, you know, you had everybody, the only place to go was the zoo. Then King’s Island came in with a brand new lion park, and I said to… Read More
The board finally resolved its own problems. It had limited terms and it started to appoint good people to the board and movers and shakers in the community, and together, we really began to rebuild the zoo. We started major fundraising and capital drives. We developed a master plan and… Read More
-Came into the zoo. You were the director. Read More
Sometimes we did things that you might not want to do if you were in a private zoo. We had all kinds of, literally programs that were non-zoo related just to get bodies through the gate. But I realized how important they were. And eventually, we were clever enough and… Read More
We could do that. Being a private zoo, we could select who could come in the zoo or not. So as general curator, you had been starting to make some changes at the zoo. Now you are the zoo director. Read More
What was the condition of the zoo when you took it over?… Read More
Yes. Read More
To a private zoo?… Read More
Yes, I came from a zoo that was operated by the city, Lincoln Park Public Zoo, and went into a private org- It was a totally different life experience. Tell me about those differences. Well, the differences of a working in a public zoo, we had departments, we had maintenance… Read More
I think to make me an effective zoo director, I had a passion for my charges and the animal collection was paramount and always has been, and always will be. I had an eye for detail and I knew what I wanted. I had management skill, I knew how to… Read More
The zoo was publicly or privately run at the time?… Read More
The Cincinnati Zoo, when I took it over, we received very little capital money from the city. We received free water and sometimes slight cap- When they were plush and had some capital monies, they would give us a small amount of capital money, but it was a privately run… Read More
There were a number of people- Fred Z. Hanalar. The person that ran the zoo before Bill Hoff was a gentleman by the name of Jack Huser and Fred Z. Hanalar had a lot to do with Jack Huser. And Jack apparently was driven by- The board was, it was… Read More