I'd like to see the park in general upgraded to San Diego standards. The Zoo and Balboa Park are both templates that are worth studying and adapting to our particular needs. I love Franklin Park, and while it gets some decent amount of use, it could be so much more than it is now. Adding some food and beverage pavilions, upgrading the zoo's physical plant and collections, and perhaps a small, little kid oriented amusement park would help. And by all means, a small train would really make for some added fun. These are the kinds of things that heavily patronized parks have. Franklin Park has room for such things, even if we keep the golf course.
I'm not sure if I see the need for a overhaul of the Zoo, or even the continued presence of the Zoo as it stands today. The Franklin Park Zoo has always felt a little shabby; it hasn't made any "best of" lists that I can find, when people are in town I never think of recommending the Zoo as a destination in the same way you would in San Diego, and I never really heard of it being a big pull for Bostonians outside of some family/field trips.
If we're doing that maybe we should use the somehow even shabbier Stone Zoo.
Lol I honestly had to look up where that was, I can't believe I didn't know that was near Middlesex Fells. Makes sense that Franklin Parks other zoo would be worse. Honestly I think Buttonwood Park Zoo might be the nicer Zoo in the state.
It's been a while but I seem to remember Southwick Zoo being decent too.
Yeah, I probably should have been more clear in my post. I don't see any possibility for the Franklin Park Zoo (officially Zoo New England) to become a world class destination. It's the shabbiness you reference that I'd like to see fixed. When I say I want it to be more like the San Diego Zoo, I mean I want it to be clean and top grade for the scale and scope available. It certainly can never have the type of collections found in San Diego, but it could be made in to something that is an attractive part of how somebody might spend part of their day in the park.
Honestly they just need to keep redoing their existing exhibits to remove the chain link fences. The giraffe area is great in part because it's partially hidden from the main path by vaguely-correct-looking grasses, and you're separated from the animals by a wooden fence. Many of the other exhibits in that area feel bad because it's just some kangaroos behind a chain link fence. I know they're working on it (The Jungle building is amazing), but the zoo does need a lot of money and work.
