ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The Monroe County Legislature is set to discuss the design plans for the expansion of the Seneca Park Zoo at a meeting Tuesday, with a focus on ensuring that taxpayers don’t lose millions of dollars as they did during the previous design attempt.

The county has been trying to revamp the zoo for a decade but the cost of the last design ballooned from $270,000 to $8 million over the course of a decade. Those plans were ultimately scrapped when only one contractor was interested in building the project and its bid was 50+ million dollars higher than the amount the County was prepared to pay.

“You can do all the amendments (to the original contract) that you want as long as it stays within the capital budget well what that led to was 12 amendments over eight years that added up to more than $8 million so, it’s not exactly a blank check, but it’s sort of like a blank check,” says Rachel Barnhart, (D) Monroe County Legislator of the process that was used to keep approving appropriations without oversight from the legislature.   

Monroe County’s Director of Environmental Services, Mike Garland, says not all of the previous work is useless.

“We expect to retain the geotechnical engineering, the geothermal engineering, the survey work, the constructability review… a lot of the site engineering is very valuable to the (new) firm, that we won’t have to replicate.”

But there’s no question that millions were lost in the last process.

“Going forward, we’re going to learn from certainly this past experience. We want to simplify the design to the maximum extent that we can, we want frequent and independent cost estimates throughout the project leading up till bid-day so that we can anticipate any potential fluctuations in the construction marketplace,” Garland says.

County Executive Adam Bello recently told News10NBC that he was clear with the new architects about the problems of the past and assured them they could work within the allocated budget.

“I am confident, yes and as we were working through the process of working through this new design, that was the first question I asked everybody, that was the number one priority here,” Bello said. “I really liked working with the team that we chose to do that, because they were honest about certain things that you can or can’t have if you want to stay in the budget.”

Legislator Barnhart hopes that’s the case but plans to introduce an amendment that would require the County Executive to come back to the Legislature for amendments to the contract of more than 10% of its total value.

“I’m comfortable with the choice that they’re making, I just want to make sure that this thing doesn’t go off the rails again in terms of how much it costs,” Barnhart says. 

The county wants to keep the total cost of the project at roughly $100 million. Monroe County will cover $34.5 million, New York State has committed $42.5 million, and the Seneca Park Zoo Society will have to raise the rest, which is about $23 million.

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