PANAMA CITY BEACH — New ZooWorld director Kayte Wanko sees big potential in the small park.
“Obviously, there’s work to be done, but I hope we can bring a lot of changes that people will appreciate,” Wanko told The News Herald on Tuesday, following the announcement that her company, Rhynettes LLC, purchased the 5.4-acre Panama City Beach park for $900,000.
“When I found out ZooWorld was a possibility, I looked into it a little bit further and found out it was something that fit with something I thought was good in the zoo world,” she said. “This is a really small, intimate setting, which I really love.”
With 15 years of experience in the zoo business under her belt, Wanko hopes to get the facility back to being profitable, with new exhibits, new animals, facilities improvements and a strategic marketing plan geared at boosting admission among locals.
“The biggest [visitor] portion we get is tourists,” Wanko said. “We’d like to see a lot more of the locals coming and to have our season pass sales go up — not just to increase the revenue, but because we want the community to be involved with what’s going on.”
Getting the nonprofit organization operating back in the black after posting a $76,993 loss in 2013 also will mean making cuts where needed.
“Unfortunately, the zoo was operating at a loss, and one of the things we had to do to put the budget back into line was to reduce the number of staff that we have,” said Wanko, who reduced the staff size by a bit less than 50 percent. “We’re still very appropriately staffed; it’s just going to be a different work style. Now, everybody’s day has to be more efficiently managed.”
She plans to run the zoo as a family business, alongside her father and sister. Improvements to the 30-year-old facility are first on the family’s list, and Wanko is in the process of brainstorming new exhibits that could fit into the ZooWorld space.
One that already has been decided on is a new bird feeding exhibit, where patrons can walk into a large, enclosed space and feed free-flight “budgies,” a type of parakeet. The exhibit would replace ZooWorld’s current lemur walk-through exhibit.
Zoo experience: Wanko’s zoo career began at Busch Gardens Tampa, where she worked with the park’s big cats, giraffes and hippos. From there, she moved to the Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Ind., as manager of the children’s farm.
“That’s where I really learned, if you want to successfully engage people and bring them back in, you have to be hands-on; you have to involve them with things; you have to let them touch animals and get close,” said Wanko, who plans to keep the same philosophy at ZooWorld. “I love having the ability to give them memorable experiences.”
Wanko also worked as curator at Reston Zoo in Virginia, which she described as “a small, child-friendly facility, before taking a leadership position at the Gulf Breeze Zoo five years ago, where she aided in the park’s transition to new ownership. The park was purchased in 2010 by the owners of the Virginia Safari Park in Natural Bridge, Va., and the Reston Zoo, where Wanko previously worked.
Gulf Breeze Zoo officials and patrons have attested that the transition helped bring a more personal feel to the facility, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last year.
“It will be really fun for the community to see as we develop,” Wanko said of ZooWorld. “Over the next five years, I think everyone is going to be really surprised with what we can do.”
Moving forward, ZooWorld will remain a nonprofit but will run on a business model focused on driving revenues from admissions, not charitable contributions, both of which had declined in 2013.
“While it is a not-for-profit, it still needs to be able to take care of itself,” Wanko said. “Anything that comes in the form of donations or grants should be the icing on our cupcake. I want to make sure that this facility can afford itself.
“Every improvement that we do is something that’s going to fit into our budget. That’s my goal is to never have to reach out to the community and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to lose this if we don’t have help.’ ”