Hattiesburg Zoo plans expansion | Free News
The Hattiesburg Zoo will soon feature a new attraction – a five-acre waterpark to keep the scorching hot days of summer more bearable for guests.The waterpark is being built where the former Cameron Park Dixie Youth baseball fields were located and is expected to be in operation this summer.
The waterpark will feature a 150,000-gallon lazy river, swim-up pool bar, group pavilions, cabanas and food trucks.
“The original plan was to build a splashpad for kids to play on while they were at the zoo,” said Rick Taylor, executive director of the Hattiesburg Convention Commission. “By the time we built it, however, kids were so stacked up on it that there was little room to move around. That’s when the plan went into effect to build the waterpark. Seeing how much of a change that little area made, it just made sense for us to expand on it.”
The waterpark is going to have animals like birds, monkeys and some reptiles spread throughout the area so that not only can the park be just as fun as any other waterpark, but also still have an educational element.
“We want this to feel like an extra part of the zoo, not a waterpark that’s separate from it,” Taylor said.
The Hattiesburg Zoo is one of just a handful of zoos across the world that isn’t subsidized by any government bodies, Taylor said.
“In 2017, the zoo moved into the black, so to speak,” Taylor said. “We no longer were having to subsidize the zoo through taxes. The waterpark is just another way for us to further progress the zoo’s profits. It’s unusual for a city to have a zoo, so we have to find ways that can bring in more revenue and more space for people to move around. We plan on expanding the zoo even further, so this will help fund those expansions in the future.
“The zoo, after this point, won’t be something that travelers will simply be able to do in a day, but will instead take two days to fully be able to get out and see everything. That will be not only better for the zoo itself but all of Hattiesburg will be able to benefit from it.”
Hattiesburg Dixie Youth baseball park has moved to JC Park, not far from Hattiesburg High School.
“Cameron Park is a really nostalgic place for a lot of the Hattiesburg community,” Taylor said. “That nostalgia has really gone both ways so far though. A lot of people in the area say (they) are really going to miss the park, but honestly, we’d have rather had a new park and waterpark growing up. We know that they are almost finished with it now, and will have the Dixie Youth back playing there by next season.
“The way the zoo itself wants to remember the sight is in the food court. We are going to have a lot of baseball and other sports memorabilia linked to the park. We don’t want to take away the history of such an integral part of the community, but also need to expand out of necessity. History should be remembered, respected and preserved, but change is going to happen eventually.”
The Hattiesburg Zoo took inspiration from the zoo in Louisville, Ky., Taylor said, after that facility bought a Six Flags waterpark and incorporated it into its zoo.
“We knew if we were going to keep this zoo progressing into the future then we needed a way to bring in more funds,” Taylor said. “We don’t have very much competition in the urbanized area, and so it should be very profitable.”
When the zoo built the African-safari expansion it cost close to $5 million and that does not include the food for each animal and the staff in a new area.
“We put in a ropes course in the zoo and we expected it to take about five years for it to generate a profit, and it only took about 2 ½,” Taylor said. “We expect this waterpark to pay for itself in about eight years, with a low end of five years if it’s slammed. This means that we can quickly start getting more things that the animals need and bring in more animals to our efforts.”
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