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Jacksonville Zoo dock damage costing ripple effect in lost business

Damage to dock at Jacksonville Zoo, which had allowed public access, is costing the Zoo and other businesses potential revenue

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Not many cities' zoos can boast access by water. Until Hurricane Irma, Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens did.

"So we were starting to use the river more, the dock was getting to be more important to us," executive director Tony Vecchio told First Coast News on Thursday. "And then that nasty Irma came along and ruined all our plans."

Vecchio pointed out that, although the zoo offered public dock access, its location was a bit prohibitive.

"The depth of the water, the river there, it’s very shallow, so the people that used it had to know the tide table very well," he said.

Meaning, the thigh-deep water precluded deep-drafting vessels reaching the dock without running aground. But since last September that has become academic, after the hurricane left the dock lying splintered and fragmented. The timing was especially unfortunate because the zoo and the St. Johns River Taxi (boat) service had just begun a collaboration less than a year before the storm.

"It was popular, not only with people coming from the hotels downtown, but then the boat would park here and wait for those people to go back, and while it was doing that we would do river tours," Vecchio explained.

"We would get to the zoo and then we would offer dolphin tours or eco-tours from the zoo dock," the River Taxi's Heather Surface detailed.

"Folks downtown loved it, visitors loved it, locals loved it," she said. "It benefited the zoo, it benefited the water taxi, and mainly it benefited the Jacksonville visitor."

The zoo has applications still pending for FEMA relief from Hurricane Matthew in 2016, but the slow process is only part of the problem.

"FEMA would reimburse us for the dock if we were going to build it in the same place, exactly the same way it was." But not if the rebuild is even just a few hundred feet away, where the water is deeper.

"We've been looking for years at moving it to a better location, closer to the channel, so we wouldn't have to dredge," Vecchio said. "So we're working with the state and the Jacksonville City Council; we're looking at ways to do a new dock, and it won't be FEMA money but it will be money from other sources."

The cost to rebuild is unclear, but Vecchio estimates it will easily be in the six-figure range. It's a disappointment and an opportunity cost for both the Zoo and the River Taxi.

"We get calls every day from people who want to go to the zoo by boat, who want to know when it’s going to be resurrected. And it can’t be soon enough for us," Surface said from aboard one of the Taxi's pontoon boats in downtown Jacksonville.

The cost might not stop there. Becky Parker, with tourism promoter Visit Jacksonville, said First Coast waterways and the ease of access they provide to waterside attractions is a factor to the local economy.

"One of the main things that [visitors] want to do is to get out on the water and see the other sights," Parker said, while leading a tour group of a dozen meeting planners from other cities. "It’s so costly for them to buy a bus and to be able to ship everybody out to [the Zoo], versus the river taxi being able to take it to the zoo and being able to dock."

Parker also pointed out that the Zoo itself offers meeting space suitable for corporate groups.

"We have amazing meeting space there that they could use for dinners or extra picnics, or something like that, for our groups."

With Vecchio pegging the rebuilding timeframe in the two-to-three-year range, the cost is hard to number economically, and impossible to measure educationally.

"To not be teaching people about the river and the advantages of having these beautiful rivers in town is kind of a missed opportunity for us."

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