This should be a celebratory time for Zoo New England.
The chronically underfunded organization, which runs the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston and the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, recently completed its largest-ever fund-raiser, surpassing its $6.6 million goal, and received the first seven-figure gift in its history. It has beefed up its board and has a modern new children’s exhibit in the works.
But now it is facing a new woe: The 110-year-old Stone Zoo is at risk of losing its accreditation, due to overdue maintenance and insufficient funding, and has until September to resolve those concerns.
The tenuous status of the two zoos is not new; for years they have struggled financially, raising questions about why it is so hard for the Boston area to manage facilities that thrive in other cities. Think the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio and the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.
Both the Franklin Park and Stone zoos are saddled with aging campuses they inherited when they transitioned from state-run entities to a nonprofit structure in the early 1990s. Modernizing them would likely require more money than Zoo New England’s ambitious capital campaign just raised.
The Stone Zoo, 10 miles north of Boston near Spot Pond, uses an old trailer for a bathroom. Zoo New England’s chief executive, John Linehan, noted that it is difficult to raise money to replace it because donors aren’t clamoring to put their names on a facility that houses toilets. And he described a concrete bunker-like exhibit there called “Windows to the Wild” as an “icon of the past” that he’d like to turn into classrooms.
Zoo officials said they have corrected many of the problems identified by inspectors at the Stone Zoo, such as insufficient fencing around some animal exhibits that has since been improved and made higher. Inspectors also cited an outdated fire extinguisher, nonworking electrical outlets, and an overreliance on extension cords, Linehan said.
Was the risk of losing accreditation a shock?
“Unfortunately not,” said Linehan, who has worked for the organization since he graduated from college in 1980. “We’ve got an incredible staff doing incredible things, but our physical facilities are a detriment at this point.”
On the fund-raising side, Zoo New England has numerous challenges. It’s competing for dollars in a crowded cultural marketplace. It must address some people’s fundamental opposition to keeping animals in captivity. And its zoos are not easily accessible by public transportation, often causing them to be overlooked.
Zoo officials also face longstanding questions about whether the Boston area needs and can support two zoos. They argue it can, and that the Stone Zoo’s 26-acre size — one-third the acreage of the Franklin Park Zoo — is more walkable and better suited to families with young children, making it a feeder to the larger zoo. Stone also generates more revenue, relative to expenses, than Franklin Park does.
The facilities, they said, share overhead, making them more like two campuses of the same system than two separate zoos. Zoo officials also noted that Minnesota has two successful zoos in close proximity: the Minnesota Zoo near Minneapolis and the Como Park Zoo & Conservatory in St. Paul, which together get more than 3 million visitors a year.
A loss of accreditation would not result in the Stone Zoo closing, but it would be a reputational blow that could cause other zoos to take back animals on loan through breeding programs for endangered species, and make it harder to attract and retain staff.
In a confidential letter to Zoo New England reviewed by the Globe, the accrediting agency, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, noted that zoo officials did not seem fully prepared for the inspection, even though the visit was not a surprise.
“I certainly felt like we were ready from a preparation standpoint as much as we could be, but we’re limited by our resources,” Linehan said. “In Boston, our zoos haven’t thrived for many, many decades, and they are a shadow of what they’re capable of being.”
The irony of the Stone Zoo’s predicament is that it comes as Zoo New England is making significant strides toward improving its financial health. Since 2010, zoo officials said, attendance has increased by almost 20 percent, and private fund-raising by 45 percent. It has doubled the size of its board, which Linehan said now includes people with “big Rolodexes” who can attract more philanthropy, and it has added corporate and foundation supporters. In addition, the Franklin Park Zoo has devised creative ways to bring in revenue beyond ticket sales, such as charging visitors a fee to climb a viewing platform that brings them eye-to-eye with giraffes and selling seed sticks to feed budgies in a free-flight aviary.
But the country’s most successful zoos typically rely on a stable combination of public and private financing, and they receive more robust state funding. So Zoo New England is urging the state to release more money from a $30 million bond authorized in 2008 for zoo capital improvements that, so far, has been parceled out in relatively small amounts, leaving $16 million unspent.
“It’s almost like it’s enough to keep us eating but not enough to keep us healthy,” said Zoo New England’s new board chairman, David Porter, the owner of Boston’s Baystate Financial.
Zoo officials said they believe the new gubernatorial administration offers an opportunity, considering their tense relationship with former governor Deval Patrick. That was due to a 2009 public relations debacle in which they warned that Patrick’s zoo budget cuts could result in animals being put to death. No animals were killed, but the political damage was done.
“The change of administration is what we’re hoping for,” Porter said.
In what zoo officials take as positive signs, Governor Charlie Baker spoke at Zoo New England’s annual gala this month, and Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Jay Ash has had several conversations with them to discuss the accreditation issue and bond funding.
A spokesman for Ash, Paul McMorrow, said: “We are trying to figure out how to make the zoos the most effective public-private partnership we can have, but as far as getting a number on a piece of paper, we’re not there yet.”
Last year, Zoo New England had a $14 million budget, of which $5.6 million was provided by the state, and ran a $342,000 operating deficit, according to its most recent tax filing. In prior years it has toggled between deficits and surpluses. “Every year we’re right on the line,” Linehan said. “Sometimes it’s a little above, sometimes it’s a little below, with a growing budget overall.”
Zoo New England’s just-completed capital campaign will pay for a new exhibit called Nature’s Neighborhoods that’s designed to let children experience life in the wild, from climbing bamboo poles like a panda to sitting atop an aerial lookout like an eagle.
New board member Colin Van Dyke, an environmental lawyer at Mintz Levin, called that project, scheduled to open next year, a “big new shiny exhibit . . . that will launch us to the next success and then the next success and then the next success.”
But, he added, “a substantial increase in public support is going to be vital to this exercise.”
Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at sacha.pfeiffer@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SachaPfeiffer.