New Animal Health Center at Syracuse zoo was a long time coming

SYRACUSE — Officials formally opened the $7.5 million Animal Health Center at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo on April 12 — after breaking ground on it in September 2020.

However, Ted Fox, the Syracuse zoo’s executive director, said the planning and thinking about the center started long ago “We’ve waited for this day about 15 years,” Fox said in speaking to a gathering at the formal-opening ceremony. 

The event took place on the grounds of a bustling Rosamond Gifford Zoo, which was full of parents and children on a sun-filled, spring break day. 

The new Animal Health Center “allows us to keep our accreditation with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums,” Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said in his remarks at the event. “When we are accredited, what it allows us to do for the kids … it allows us the responsibility to host some of the coolest animals in the country.” 

The Animal Health Center will enable the Rosamond Gifford Zoo to treat larger animals and to keep its partnership with Cornell University to conduct research and development and to train “the workforce of tomorrow” in this space, the county executive noted. 

The Friends of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo contributed more than $1 million in equipment for the facility. 

“With community members, organizations, and foundations, we’re able to raise over $1.1 million to make sure our veterinarians have the tools that they need to take care of the animals here at the zoo and also in the wild,” Carrie Large, executive director of the Friends of the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, said at the April 12 ceremony.

Besides the opening of the Animal Health Center, Large noted that the event also represented the opening of the zoo’s junior veterinary clinic inside the health center. 

Donors to the new 21,000-square-foot Animal Health Center got a sneak peek inside the facility at a special recognition event on Sept. 17 of last year, per the zoo’s website.