It’s official. The time has arrived for St. Louis to get over its free-zoo obsession for tourists.
For generations, local residents have prided themselves on the freeness of their legendary zoo. People love the fact that it’s free almost as much as they love seeing the animals—maybe more.
I’m not sure why this is so, but it was reasonable back in 1970, when some young state legislators from the city scored a great achievement in the creation of a Zoo-Museum District to provide stable and permanent public support of the zoo, along with the Saint Louis Art Museum and a fledging science center. Back then, most zoos were free, but almost none had the sort of property-tax funding that the ZMD would provide.
Legislators from St. Louis County (then known as the boondocks) were suspicious that their constituents would get taxed to support the faraway zoo and art museum, only to get double-dipped later with admission charges. So a compromise was hammered out, and the legislation creating the ZMD stated that the institutions would be “forever free.” So it came to pass.
Now, slightly more than four decades into forever, the Zoo Commission has given its blessing to pursue an ambitious expansion plan across Highway 40 that would feature a major new attraction, such as an aquarium or a rainforest, along with a gondola, a hotel, a research facility, a savanna, and more. The plan was officially launched September 26.
It’s a great vision—a big idea in a town that sorely needs one—but there’s no way it can happen without hundreds of millions of new dollars pouring in. So with some irony, zoo officials—who have steadfastly refused even to consider a change in their free-admission policies—have placed in motion a project that virtually demands consideration of the subject. Or it will fail.
That’s why I say it’s official that the free-zoo notion be scrapped. Call it St. Louis’ tourism moment.
You see, zoos in 2013 play a very different role in cities like St. Louis than they did in 1970 or earlier. Today, only a tiny handful of zoos are free, and the large majority are generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue at their gates, much of it from tourists. That’s huge, because money flowing in from out of town is far more stimulating to a local economy than recirculated revenue at home.
The Saint Louis Zoo is one of the area’s two giant tourist attractions—along with the Gateway Arch—with some 3.5 million visitors annually. Zoo officials track visitor demographics carefully (with scientific polling), and they report that some 37 percent of visitors come from outside the metropolitan area. That’s nearly 1.3 million visits from wallets that don’t reside here.
On average, zoos in comparable cities take in $15 to $20 per person in admission fees, prices that continue to rise across the board (see chart). In a region with a declining corporate base and one of the most sluggish economies in the nation, can St. Louis afford to ignore the math?
Tourism is a big deal to regions like St. Louis in 2013. And if you’re serious about tourism, you cannot take your most important tourist asset and give it away.
Repeat: You cannot give it away. Providing free admission to tourists at a world-class zoo today is beyond absurdity. It’s civic malpractice. Unless you start with the assumption that people traveling to St. Louis have a fixed amount they will spend, those millions in uncollected admission fees will remain uncollected. They’re not just going to say, “Hey, we got in free. Let’s buy an extra stuffed animal. And let’s spend more for dinner tonight.”
And please don’t say the bottom is going to drop out of zoo attendance if tourists have to pay to get in. Really? Are visitors going to turn up their nose at a famous zoo because it charges comparably to other zoos?
But what about those people who trek to St. Louis just to get into its cultural institutions for free? Now, there’s a sought-after market. A Saint Louis Science Center official told me years ago that a study found that people who received free admission actually spent less once inside than those who paid to get in. It makes sense: People attracted to something because it’s free are likely to spend less than people who thought it was worth paying for.
If that’s our market—tourists who want free things—maybe we should launch a campaign proclaiming “Come to St. Louis. Everything’s cheap here!” Maybe we can include information on KOA campgrounds as an alternative to our hotels and urge people to bring their own food in keeping with the cheap theme.
Tourism is about making money, not friends. And in the case of the zoo, tourist admission fees would represent money critical to fulfilling its bold expansion dreams. Without it, all the burden falls upon city and county taxpayers, who now contribute more than $20 million in annual property-tax dollars to the zoo.
It turns out, that system is as obsolete as our tourism model. While the ZMD remains a wonderful concept—a national model, really—for funding our cultural institutions, the structure has been warped by dramatic population shifts. In 1970, St. Louis city and county represented more than 80 percent of the census-defined metropolitan area. Today, city and county residents compose less than half of the metro area. They represent a tax base that’s stagnant at best, one that will be increasingly unable to meet the institutions’ long-term funding needs.
In that regard, here are some statistics that ought to get the attention of taxpayers in St. Louis city and county.
Of the roughly 3.5 million visits made annually to the Saint Louis Zoo, only 30 percent are by residents of the county, and only 9 percent are by residents of the city. That means 61 percent of the zoo’s visitors live in neither of the two jurisdictions that support it with that $20 million each year.
It ought to be especially galling to taxpayers that almost a quarter of the zoo’s visitors (24 percent) are residents of the St. Louis metropolitan area who live just outside the city and county, and thus aren’t asked to contribute a dime. The zoo receives as many visitors from St. Charles County as it does from the city of St. Louis.
St. Charles County, wealthy and growing rapidly, pays zero to support the zoo. The city, virtually broke and stagnant in population, pitches in almost $3 million per year. Great system.
Four years ago, I wrote about this subject in these pages and urged that the ZMD legislation be amended to read that the institutions remain “forever free to residents of the ZMD’s taxing districts.” I wouldn’t change a word of it.
This is an important point: I think the zoo should most definitely remain “forever free” to the people whose tax dollars support it (and perhaps their guests). The hefty support from the city and county should be treated in the same fashion that private donations are: You give money, and you receive benefits—in this case, free admission.
As for the 24 percent of St. Louis–area residents who are now carried by the city and county residents, I suggested then—and reassert now—that a ZMD membership offer be extended to St. Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin counties in Missouri, as well as St. Clair and Madison counties in Illinois.
The benefit to joining would be free admission for residents of those jurisdictions. And it would be reasonable to discuss having ZMD institutions, satellites, or research facilities in counties that would join. It would not be strictly about admission. The sources of taxation might vary. So might the rates. There’s plenty to negotiate.
That’s likely to take years to happen (especially with an interstate compact involved for Illinois), because this is no simple matter. There’s a real chance that some or all of the five counties would never agree to join the district.
There’s no way to rush the process of adding to the ZMD structure. It would make sense to have a grace period on admission for the region’s surrounding counties over the next few years while they negotiate over joining the ZMD. But even if that never happens, there’s an easy solution for St. Louis–area residents outside the city and county who want free admission: Join the zoo.
In the meantime, the notion of charging zoo admission to tourists has to move as fast as consideration of the expansion plan. One won’t work without the other, plain and simple. Asking city and county taxpayers for more money is a nonstarter. Hitting up private donors takes money out of one pocket and puts it into another.
The time for an exciting expansion of the zoo is now. But so is the time for a new vision of tourism. If St. Louis really loves its zoo, it won’t keep leaving tens of millions of out-of-town dollars lying at its gates.
Commentary by Ray Hartmann
