The Mesker Park Zoo and Botanic Garden Advisory Board met on August 4, 2026 at 12:00 P.M. to discuss routine approvals, receive an update from Executive Director Erik Beck, and approve a contract for boardwalk replacement. The meeting was adjourned after approval of the new business item.
Alright, good afternoon. Call the August meeting of the Mesker Park Zoo and Botanic Garden Advisory Board to uh meeting or two to uh open. Uh any changes, edits, additions to the minutes from our last meeting in July. Hearing none, these will be approved by unimagine unanimous consent then. Next up we have our report by uh executive director Beck. Uh good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming in today. It's a beautiful day outside. So it's been a busy day at the zoo with the last week of summer for a lot of school districts. Um so this whole week has been pretty busy. Uh tenants and revenue. Uh July, we had 18,000 visitors, so we're already up to 126,000 visitors uh for the season, um, which is a good start. Wild summer lights just kicked off uh the last weekend in July, um, which was just just the past weekend. Um and it's it's going well. It was kind of nice to have a slowish start, which is similar to what we had last year, uh, just as the heat of the summer. Um we expect that to pick up as the daylight gets shorter and uh the temperatures get a little more comfortable. Um so yeah, 18,000 kind of puts us a right around where we, you know, that 20 to 19,000, which is in the 20 since we've opened penguins. Uh revenue, 145,000 in gross revenue for the month of July. Puts us a little over a million dollars for the year. I would say that one of the highlights on the next page is gift shop, had a record a record July. Uh so we did 40,000 in sales. Um it looks like it beat the previous record by 40. So somebody got in there at the last minute and ordered a plushie toy or two. Uh and you can see last year with Wild Summer Lights, the gift shop um did really well in August, September, and October. So we expect those numbers to bump up again as well as we're opened. We keep the gift shop open, obviously, during the event. And then concession sales. Uh looks like this data is current through June. They had 47,000 in sales in June, and they're at 210 in gross sales for the year so far. Um staffing updates. Uh we are in the process of finalizing an offer for our second veterinarian technician at the zoo. Um we did in-person interviews last week and our veterinary met with our veterinarian, and so we're working on the process to get that person an offer out and onboarded. Uh guest services manager, which uh was vacated by Stephanie Sanderson. She retired earlier in the summer. Um, we're doing interviews this weekend next week for guest services manager. And then animal curators kind of in a holding pattern. We'd really just have not had much interest in that from people that meet the qualifications, so we're kind of regrouping on that. Um hope to meet with the administration to talk about that next week just to try to get that off. We've um we've been without our second animal curator for almost a year now. So it's just it's just going too long to keep it um the way it is. Um then a few updates on animal department. Um we did get a male sedatunga, I think I mentioned a couple of meetings ago. He's now um moved out and he's I think getting ready to be introduced to the girls. Uh we have some that are recommended to breed with him and some that are not, so we're um doing contraception methods on the ones that are not recommended to breed with him before he gets introduced. He's still a young guy, but he'll get out and enjoy being with those girls. Our peccaries, um, we're still expecting peccary babies any day. Um that'll be the first one, first uh litter for us, so um be interesting to see. So they may or may not take it. This is like their first their first cycle that we would expect them to be having babies. Um we're working on sending out our squirrel monkeys.