Zoo Should Be Tamed For Park

Fifty years from now, Walk in the Wild zoo will be remembered as faintly as the zoo that once occupied the current site of Manito Park. What will stand on its gorgeous riverbank location? Aging condos? How about a park and community center as beloved as Manito, a big splash of peace, greenery and wildlife habitat in what’s sure to be an urban sea of roofs and parking lots?

Residents of the Valley already express justified concern over the inadequate supply of parks. Someday, dense development likely will stretch all the way from Spokane to Coeur d’Alene. Now is the time to set land aside so that this community-to-be will enjoy the same sort of park system for which the city of Spokane is today so grateful.

The Centennial Trail provides a foundation to build upon. At one end is Riverfront Park; at the other, the scenic shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene. It makes sense to anchor another major park in the middle.

But if that park is to materialize, civic leaders will have to act.

Inland Empire Paper Co., a corporate affiliate of this newspaper, has offered to donate the zoo’s 81-acre site to Spokane County, with only one condition: That it be used for park and recreational purposes.

The complication is the zoo. The paper company has let the zoo use the land, rent-free, for 23 years. The zoo continues to be a marginal operation with a shoestring budget, troubled leadership and no realistic prospects for significant change. There is not the slightest chance that voters, who have declined even to improve overcrowded public schools, would give millions in taxes for a public zoo. The county would be nuts to accept this land with any liability for the zoo’s continuation or closure costs. The zoo’s lease expires in June and it should be allowed to close then. Better now, than later when closure might be the taxpayers’ headache. The site’s innate potential as wildlife habitat can keep the zoo’s spirit alive, without the tacky cages.

The important question is how the land can be preserved for its potential. Public ownership, with safeguards to keep the potential secure, is the fairest, surest way. Valley activist Denny Ashlock is even promoting such possibilities as combining a public park with a civic center focused on recreation. His ideas deserve evaluation but require no immediate decisions. What is required is the vision to preserve the land, for which development pressure does exist, in trust for the community’s future.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board