Denver’s zoo will hold off on a pilot program that would have reopened a long-dormant second entrance on the west side of the property inside City Park. A zoo spokesman said the decision was made in advance of a Sept. 2 public meeting with about 70 residents of nearby neighborhoods.
Many of those neighbors are opposed to the plan, said David Scarbeary, president of City Park Friends & Neighbors (CPFAN), a registered neighborhood organization that works with — and often prods the zoo — on projects that will affect City Park.
“There was a very clear consensus that folks were not ready to have that western gate reopened as it was proposed or described,” he told The Denver Post.
While he said the zoo may be trying to alleviate parking pressure on its lots, “That’s not why City Park exists,” he added. “First and foremost, it’s for the public — birthday parties, tennis matches, volleyball, playground visitors, joggers.”
The western entrance of the 128-year-old zoo is located near the Lorikeet Adventure and Primate Panorama exhibits. It is tucked into the park, due east of the City Park Tennis Courts, and northwest of Duck Lake along an interior road accessible from 23rd Avenue. It was used daily from 1958 through 2004, said zoo spokesman Jake Kubié. It got sporadic use from 2004 to 2012, but it’s been fully closed for 13 years.
Zoo officials have said reopening the western entrance could expand access for pedestrians, cyclists and others who live close to City Park. Officials proposed — and are now holding back on — a one-year pilot program to see how the reopening would affect safety, traffic flow, parking and access to the larger, 330-acre park.
If or when the pilot eventually starts, zoo officials will begin examining data from Placer.ai, a program that tracks cell phone locations and movement without accessing personal data, to show where people are entering and leaving the zoo, and how a new entrance may affect the area around it. There is no start date or cost estimate for the project.
The zoo currently sees about 1.6 million visitors annually and is one of the city’s most popular cultural attractions.
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However, the zoo had already decided to pause the pilot program plan, Kubié added, so it can gather more feedback. He said the meeting was productive and that attendees’ concerns were all valid. He said some residents spoke in favor of the entrance.
Scarbeary said the organization has some work to do if it wants to convince neighbors. “The access today to that (western) entrance would be unsafe,” Scarbeary said. “So they have to address that. But it also conflicts with logic to say that it would make a difference in the volume of visitors you get at the zoo to have pedestrian access, say, for the 2,025 people who live in South City Park. If you’re doing it for pedestrians and cyclists, as the zoo says, would a few dozen or hundred people make a difference in offsetting congestion? I don’t think so.”
A draft version of the public survey for the pilot program is available at bit.ly/47ciuXn. (Note: the pilot program hasn’t officially begun, despite the July 2025 start date mentioned in the survey.)
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