These Boise businesses must draw crowds to keep afloat, but COVID-19 ravaged their budgets
The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic last spring caused guest visits to halt for many businesses. But as admissions stopped, the expenses of running a business didn’t — which posed a particular problem for those who have hungry mouths to feed and living things to care for.
Zoos warned early on that the loss of admissions revenue was potentially catastrophic. Late last month, the Denver Zoo put out a plea for donations, saying its monthslong closure and reduced admissions has slashed funds necessary to feed its 3,000 animals — including an elephant whose diet alone costs nearly $80,000 per year.
Zoo Boise shared its own requests for donations as 2020 ended.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all. The zoo is no exception. Today we ask for your help to make sure we can continue to offer education programs, support our zoo chefs, and provide amazing experiences,” the zoo wrote on social media.
Officials at Zoo Boise and at similar businesses in the Treasure Valley say while the pandemic has ravaged revenues, they haven’t found themselves in dire straits yet. With the COVID-19 vaccine rollout underway in Idaho, many of them are optimistic for a better 2021. Still, they say it will be far from a normal year for businesses that rely on attendance.
Zoo Boise at an advantage thanks to city support
In many ways, Zoo Boise has been just like other zoological parks across the country when COVID-19 arrived. It shut its doors to guests for months, only reopening with a strict cap on attendance and a requirement that visitors wear face masks.
“The advantage we have that a lot of other zoos don’t have is ... a lot are run by nonprofit organizations,” said Doug Holloway, director of Boise Parks and Recreation, in a phone interview. “The city of Boise, we own the zoo, so it’s part of the everyday fabric of our overall organization.”
The majority of other U.S. zoos, including those like the Denver Zoo that are warning of funding shortfalls, are nonprofits. They rely solely on admissions, donations and sponsorships to keep cash flowing and animals fed and cared for.
In contrast, Zoo Boise received about $720,000 in subsidies from the city’s general fund in 2020. It made about $525,000 in admissions revenue for the year — about one-third of the roughly $1.5 million it had budgeted for gate receipts for the year, Holloway said.
“There’s no question that we felt the pinch from this year from the pandemic,” he said. “... We were about $1 million off what we would normally be doing.”
Zoo Boise shut its gates in March when the first cases of COVID-19 arrived in Idaho. It reopened in late June, limiting attendance to 50 guests per hour and requiring visitors to plan their trips ahead of time, booking a time slot for arrival to avoid overcrowding. Slowly, the zoo ramped up its attendance allowance as officials got a feel for social distancing and crowd control in the park, Holloway said. By September the zoo was admitting 200 guests per hour, and Holloway said he anticipates another increase to hourly capacity in the spring.
The zoo is fortunate to have 14 acres for guests to spread out, Holloway said. It’s also stationing volunteers throughout the park to avoid bottlenecks at popular exhibits and remind visitors that masks are required by city ordinance, a point zoo officials aren’t budging on.
“If you’re unable to wear a mask, we have shields,” Holloway said. “And if you’re unable to wear a shield, unfortunately you won’t be able to come into the zoo.”
Holloway said it’s important to keep visitors at the park, not just because of admissions revenue but because of the important educational opportunities the zoo provides. Plus, he said, the animals prefer it.
“Once guests started showing up (when we reopened), it appeared that the animals perked up,” Holloway said. “The keepers were like, ‘Oh, I hadn’t really noticed a particular animal hadn’t been as active in their environment.’ But our animals seeing guests is important to them. They see you on the other side of the glass and enjoy seeing you.”
Aside from the brief hiatus in guest visits, Holloway said nothing has changed for the animals in terms of care. Even with funding shortfalls, their care and feeding remained the same as always.
“When you run a zoo it’s very difficult to implement a substantial amount of expense control measures because the bulk of our expenses go to animal care,” Holloway said.
The zoo’s animal care costs, including “staff salaries, food, medicine, exhibit repairs and maintenance” total about $1.9 million annually, Holloway said.
The zoo even welcomed new animals in 2020 — a tiny, ferocious sand cat and a new baby anteater, penguin and nyala.
“We will obviously never sacrifice anything related to animal care,” Holloway added. “The health and welfare of our animals is one of the best in the country.”
Idaho’s nonprofit animal exhibits face funding challenges
Like Zoo Boise, the World Center for Birds of Prey closed its doors in March. But the Boise nonprofit, which operates largely indoors, was able to reopen only briefly for outdoor programs this summer. It shuttered again ahead of Thanksgiving as COVID-19 cases in Idaho began to surge, executive director Tate Mason said in a phone interview, and it remained closed in January with no clear timeline for reopening.
“Our biggest concern is the health and safety of our staff and our volunteers who are working with the birds,” Mason said. “If something happens (to one of them), we don’t have a very deep bench.”
Mason said the center employs six full-time staff, with two of them dedicated solely to caring for the raptors in its education program. The center’s parent organization, the Peregrine Fund, also hosts a species recovery program at the Boise center. It includes 55 endangered California condors along with other endangered falcon species, and it’s run by only five employees, Mason said.
“They’ve had to really focus on staying healthy because their roles are absolutely irreplaceable,” he said. “We don’t just have more people to step in and take care of condors.”
“The other reason we closed (is because) ... our volunteer base is mostly retired and in the high-risk category for health,” Mason added. “We didn’t want to put them in the line of fire, the front line, if you will.”
Mason said the support of the Peregrine Fund has been key in keeping the Birds of Prey center operational. The center is a relatively small line item in the fund’s budget. But the ongoing closures amounted to about $450,000 in lost admissions revenues in 2020 — “which is the majority of our budget,” Mason said.
The director said donors have also stuck by the center and helped keep it afloat financially. Another Boise nonprofit hasn’t been as fortunate.
Joni Sullivan, director of the Aquarium of Boise, said the aquarium is down “30 or 40% from last year” in revenues.
“Most nonprofits work on donations and sponsorships, and it’s not there right now,” she said.
The aquarium remains open with a mask requirement and limited admission, but Sullivan said it’s still a struggle to keep admissions up.
“My hope is we’ll be able to stay in business, and we’ll improve as the vaccine comes out,” she said. “We have a set amount that it costs us to keep this aquarium open, so we hope things will pick up, and I believe it will. I firmly believe we’ll get through this and survive.”
What will 2021 bring for other attendance-reliant businesses?
Sullivan said she’s heard similar stories of financial struggles from other Treasure Valley nonprofits that rely on attendance, like the Discovery Center of Idaho and the Children’s Museum of Idaho.
“It’s difficult always being a nonprofit,” Sullivan said, but limiting the attendance they need has made things even more difficult.
The Idaho Botanical Garden, another nonprofit, had to diminish its staff significantly in 2020 as it canceled events and lost much of its revenue.
The garden’s director, Erin Anderson, said guest numbers were down 70% from the last three years’ average. The Botanical Garden canceled its Outlaw Field concert series (and has already decided it will do the same for 2021) that draws tens of thousands of visitors each summer. It moved its Winter Garden aGlow event to a reservation-based system and cut admissions for its Great Garden Escape small concert series by more than half.
“We have worked very hard to cut our expenses, so we’re not at a loss as an organization, but we have cut our expenses by half and reduced our staff by half,” Anderson said in a phone interview.
The funding shortfalls meant yearly maintenance was wiped from the garden’s budget. It cut back educational programming, as well. There have been some bright spots. The garden’s fiscal year starts in April, Anderson said, which allowed it some leeway and time to rearrange funds last year. It also took in about $20,000 more than it expected to through Winter Garden aGlow fundraising. But Anderson said the garden will keep its expenditures tightly reined in for 2021.
“We know everyone is excited for 2021, and we’re all expecting that hopefully after June, we’ll have gained that herd immunity here and things will be back up and going,” she said. “But unfortunately that won’t help us with our revenue for 2021. We’re planning on operations being pretty consistent with where they were last year.”
Others, like the Birds of Prey Center’s Mason, remain optimistic.
“We lost a year, but I think that’s happened across the board, around the world,” he said. “We’re hopeful that a lot of people that haven’t come this year will come next year. (We look at it as) we didn’t lose admissions, we just put them off for a year.”
This story was originally published January 19, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
