St. Louis Zoo to be closed today for Anheuser-Busch company party

ST. LOUIS -- The St. Louis Zoo, usually closed just two days a year, agreed to shut its gates to all but select visitors today in an unprecedented revenue-raising move.

For a fee neither side would disclose, Anheuser-Busch Cos. confirmed it rented the zoo for the entire day for its annual "Family Day" company party. Thousands of people are expected to attend.

The zoo has never before closed for a private party, although it shut the gates on a Friday in June 2005 for a private, black-tie fund raiser that raised $600,000.

Sunday's event is expected to net the zoo somewhere between that amount and the $80,000 it would be forgoing in revenue from a typical Sunday in September, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The zoo is one of five St. Louis institutions that receive funding through a special property tax district established in 1971. The zoo got about $19 million in taxpayer funding last year, accounting for more than a third of its nearly $50 million annual budget. The rest of the funding comes from sales revenue and contributions.

But the rising costs of maintaining a zoo considered one of the nation's best -- particularly one with no admission fee -- has forced officials to look for new ways to increase revenue, said zoo president Jeffrey Bonner.

"If taxes paid to run this institution, we wouldn't be closed" today, Bonner said.

Kris Vehrs, deputy director of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, said she was not aware of another major zoo or aquarium that had closed for an entire day to host a private event.

St. Louis Zoo Commission chairman Steven Schankman cast the closing as an essential tool for protecting the quality of an institution that is home to 11,400 exotic animals and visited by 3 million people a year.

"We had a choice to make," Schankman said. "Disappointment of the few or the disappointment of the masses. It is a double-edged sword."

Bonner said the zoo realizes the closing presents an inconvenience for those who planned to visit the zoo on Sunday, especially if they came from out of town. He said staff would intercept people before they park in the zoo's $9 lots and provide information and coupons for one of the city's other cultural institutions.

But Bonner stood by the decision to close.

"There's no such thing as a free zoo," Bonner said.