Stephen Polk has a fascination with penguins.
“First and foremost, you can watch them for hours,” he said. “When you look at their ability to survive in the Antarctic, I just think they’re amazing creatures. But their whole world is changing … they’re vulnerable now.”
Polk and his wife, Bobbi, are donating $10 million toward the development of The Polk Family Penguin Conservation Center at the Detroit Zoo. It will replace the existing penguin house that was built in 1967.
“This project and the Polk’s generous support will be truly transformational for the zoo and for our community,” Detroit Zoo Executive Director Ron Kagan said in a statement Wednesday. “We are thrilled to be able to move forward with our plans for an amazing place for our penguins that is centered on conservation and will be an extraordinary and unique experience for our guests.”
Polk, who lives in Bloomfield Hills, is the former chairman and CEO of the R.L. Polk Company and vice chair of the Detroit Zoological Society board. He traveled with Kagan to Antarctica earlier this year.
Part of the design for the new penguin house will capture the harsh elements of Antarctica. The facility will feature 4-D effects, such as arctic blasts, rough waves and snow, and include other physical elements such as ice crevasses. The entry plaza will include a water feature that will be a splash area in the summer and skating rink in the winter.
Polk has a bachelor of science in biology and met his wife at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. He was attending graduate school and she was earning a nursing degree. They both enjoy cold weather, and they both love nature — especially when it comes to the zoo.
“Bobbi won’t go into the reptile house, but lemurs are always high on the list,” he said about their favorite attractions. “She loves the giraffes.”
The Polks have been supporters of the zoo for over three decades. Stephen Polk said he admires how Kagan looks out for the welfare of the animals — such as when he decided several years ago to move the elephants to another zoo so they would have more space to roam.
“The zoo is very conscious of animal welfare,” Polk said. “Some animals are stimulated in a positive way from interaction with people, and these exhibits are laid out with the human experience in mind. But everything is done to create a positive environment for the animals.”
The new penguin house will be a 24,000-square-foot facility and house up to 80 penguins. Visitors will have a front-row seat as the birds dive and soar through a chilled 310,000-gallon, 25-foot-deep aquatic area.
That feature will allow visitors to see penguins as they deep-water dive — something than cannot be seen anywhere else, not even in nature.
It will be built on a 2.1-acre site near the entrance and open in 2015. Kagan said he anticipates the exhibit, which will cost about $21 million, will draw an additional 100,000 visitors to the zoo and have an economic impact of more than $3 million per year. Still undetermined is how the zoo will use the existing penguin house.
Polk expects the new exhibit will entertain visitors and serve as a teaching tool in terms of how climate change is affecting the Antarctic. He anticipates it will be the finest penguin exhibit in the world.
“I think the zoo has positioned itself so well,” he said. “We’re getting support from the tri-county area and it’s one of the best attended exhibits in state. It is an enormous asset in southeast Michigan.”
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