Great Plains Zoo plans year of projects — including future splash pad

An animal-themed splash pad is going to be the latest improvement in what’s shaping up to be a busy year of construction at the Great Plains Zoo & Delbridge Museum.

It will be  near the black bear exhibit and Face-to-Face Farm and came together for the zoo after a donor showed interested in privately funding the project.

“We’re pretty excited,” CEO Becky Dewitz said. “We have talked about more interactive play, so it nicely aligned with our master plan goals.”

The splash pad is designed to accommodate multiple age groups, “so we have an area for zero to twos, and we have the toddler area and the bigger kid area with climbers to try to make it as safe as possible for everyone to play and enjoy and just have a good time,” Dewitz said.

The area also will add a family restroom that will be available year-round and will include a fee-based body dryer, so kids can dry off after they splash.

Construction on the splash pad will start in the fall after the zoo’s busy season, and the plan is to open it by Memorial Day 2024. It also will be available for birthday-party rentals.

That project will be underway at the same time as the zoo’s long-awaited lion exhibit, which will start construction next month on the edge of the property nearly the rhinos and the zoo’s cafe.

“So while we will have a lot of construction in 2023, it’s all to prepare us for an excellent year in 2024,” Dewitz said. “We’re doing our best to minimize the impacts and create a good experience, but we just ask that people have patience as we make the zoo better.”

The lion exhibit has finished design and will span more than 27,000 square feet, including a large building for indoor exhibit space, a day room that can be subdivided, bedroom space for the animals and a keeper’s office.

“There’s a lot of flexibility we built into this design,” Dewitz said.

“Additionally, the exhibit was very well designed in terms of beginning-of-life to end-of-life considerations, so it’s set up for the whole life and the well-being of the animals,” she said.

The exhibit also will include an enlarged indoor-outdoor home for the zoo’s meerkats.

“We have them currently in the giraffe barn as an indoor exhibit only, and this is going to be indoor-outdoor to better meet their needs and provide a really good dynamic to live and thrive in,” Dewitz said.

The zoo has four meerkats, and the new exhibit can hold up to seven.

It’s also designed to accommodate a full pride of lions — with six bedrooms and theoretically room to house even a couple more. The zoo is still working through its association to determine which lions will be coming to Sioux Falls, though.

The exhibit itself is designed to bring visitors into the lions’ natural environment, with many opportunities to see them interact with zoo staff and engage through glass viewing.

A mud hut will help educate about indigenous people who live among the lions, and a tunnel built from native African Kopje rock will allow visitors to potentially see lions walking overhead.

“So people can have a different type of experience and engagement with the lions that has not been done here before,” Dewitz said.

The zoo hasn’t been home to lions since 1994.

During construction this season, the train will not be running — because its route is alongside the work area — and the giraffes won’t go to their savannah, which also is nearby. Instead, they will use an extended fence area by their barn, and the zoo will add daily feeding opportunities for visitors.

Avian flu is still an issue this year, so for now the birds aren’t on exhibit outside as the zoo waits to determine when it’s safe. Outside of the prime season, there also might be times when visitors can’t have contact with animals at the Face-to-Face Farm unless staff is present because of a new federal regulation.

“From the end of May through Labor Day, I feel very confident with staffing; it’s just on the shoulders,” Dewitz said. “So there are times we might have the contact area shut down.”

Additionally, the zoo plans to bring back later hours this summer. It will stay open until 7 p.m. Wednesdays beginning May 31 until Labor Day and offer an enhanced experience beginning at 5 p.m. with beer and wine, games, giraffe feeding, mini-horse walks and cafe specials.

The annual Expedition Zoo Falls event is being replaced with Zoofari on July 27, which Dewitz describes as “a very fun night … targeting adults with food trucks and beer and giraffe feedings and yard games. It’s a fun event helping people see the zoo differently.”

This also will be a year of planning for the zoo, which merged with the Butterfly House & Aquarium at the beginning of the year and is aiming to have both organizations on the zoo’s campus by 2026.

A three-year strategic plan is being developed to achieve that along with a master plan that looks out to the next decade. That process kicked off last month and is scheduled to go to the city for approval later this year.

“Nobody is getting stuck on what was,” Dewitz said. “We’re looking at land as real estate, so in areas where the exhibits are no longer meeting the needs of animals or are not considered modern, we may have to demo and start fresh. But everyone is open-minded. It’s been a wonderful exercise to look at our property and envision what could be.”

The master plan also will address potential locations for the future aquarium and butterfly conservatory.

Since the two organizations merged earlier this year, memberships also have been adjusted to reflect that.

“We tried to simplify it and better define what each tier offers,” Dewitz said. Memberships include options for unlimited admission to one or both facilities, guest admissions and discounts. Click here for information.