Tag: fresno zoo

A look at the construction of the Chaffee Zoo expansion (picture tour)

It’s been just over a year since I posted a picture tour of the construction ongoing at Roeding Park. The construction is removing a significant amount of public park space to create an expanded zoo, with more parking.

Let’s take a look at how that’s going.

What I considered the main entrance, on Belmont, is closed off to vehicles. In red, is the fenced off area, where construction is onoging. The yellow line is the walking tour I took, along the fence. You can still park on Belmont and walk in via small entrances. The Ps are future parking, in what is parkland today.  Note the massive dirt lot across the street on the bottom, with the blue x. That could have made a perfect parking lot, while saving park space. But no. Click to read more!

Roeding Park Destruction / Zoo Expansion Begins

A few weeks ago, I was in Roeding Park and noticed some serious work underway. This week, the Bee confirmed that it’s related to the zoo expansion, although the Friends of the Park filed one final lawsuit to halt the project today.

Here’s some of the background on why the expansion is bad for the park. 

I also wrote about how the new entrance on Golden State would be bad for the neighborhood. Ironically, the lawsuit filed was because the county had to cancel those plans due to the High Speed Rail project. The entrances to the park will remain where they are today. 

The work is taking place at the south end of the park, with a side road seeing heavy deconstruction. Pardon some of the blurriness, it was darker than the pictures let on. Click to read more!