Sunday, September 22, 2013

Kansas City Zoo's penguin exhibit opening nears

Posted Sept. 19, 2013 
Independence, Mo.
By Jeff Fox

The penguins are coming to the Kansas City Zoo in a matter of weeks – and maybe, maybe a baby polar bear is too.
The zoo’s $15 million penguin exhibit is scheduled to open in late October. The 18,000-square-foot indoor-and-outdoor exhibit will have four kinds of penguins – warm-water and cold-water species – that can be seen on land and in the water. Among them will be the well known king penguin. Three smaller aquariums indoors will show moon jellies, schooling fish and an artificial coral reef.
“You ... will have the opportunity to see penguins both above and below water,” Laura Berger, the zoo’s development director, said at Thursday’s Blue Springs Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon.
With the penguins on the way, the zoo has saved the last of its popular free-admission days for Dec. 30, a day when the exhibit will be open and kids will be out of school.
The penguin exhibit was among the promises made when the zoo went to the voters of Jackson and Clay counties in 2011 for a one-eighth-cent sales tax for continued improvements. It passed. The free-admission days – four a year – for residents of those counties was part of the deal, too.

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