Monday, Feb. 26, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Federal complaints about animal care aren't the only difficulties the Southern Nevada Zoological Park is facing.
The city of Las Vegas has sued the zoo -- or more specifically, the corporation owned by Dingle that leases the site to the zoo -- because it stopped making payments on a $157,000 loan in November 1993.
In addition, the suit charges, Dingle's firm never signed over deeds of trust for security on the loan as promised in a 1992 loan modification agreement with the city.
Dingle said he is taking care of the deed transfers, that he now has the cash flow to begin making payments and that he expects the suit to be resolved soon.
Dingle's critics, however, also note that as a condition for receiving the original loan in 1989, the zoo director promised to create 12 new, permanent full-time jobs.
That, everyone agrees, never happened.
Dingle's corporation, the Southern Nevada Zoological Park Inc., originally obtained the loan from the city under a Community Development Block Grant program.
During the 1980s cities began using the block grants, which had been traditionally used for housing, to promote job creation, said Richard Welch, a former city employee who administered the loan.
Whatever the reasoning, said Welch, who became director of the city's Economic Development Department shortly after the loan was granted, it didn't work.
"Maybe the council wanted to help the zoo," he said, "so they tried to put a square peg in a round hole."
Dingle succeeded in creating a few part-time jobs, Welch said, but they didn't last. The department would periodically write Dingle letters about not creating the jobs, Welch said, but the money was not there.
"It's really a sad story," Welch said. "He was trying to do his best. Obviously he got some bad advice."
In fact, the loan became a problem almost immediately.
While Dingle's corporation was to have made monthly payments of $1,584, the suit states he paid off only $3,675 before he requested a renegotiation of the loan.
The city eventually agreed to waive the 8 percent interest and lower the payments to $600 a month. But even that turned out to be too much.
The problem, Dingle says, is that the nonprofit Nevada Zoological Foundation, which runs the zoo, never had the money to pay "anywhere near the full lease payments."
That rent, he said, comes to $21,710 a month for the four parcels totaling about 4 acres under and around the zoo.
As a result, he said, the zoo is not only in arrears on the loan, but is losing its 1 1/2-acre parking lot to foreclosure.
"We haven't made a mortgage payment in two years," he said.
Dingle said he was trying to sell the parking lot to get out from under that payment when the city filed suit.
The city, he said, apparently misunderstood his intent.
As for the CDBG loan, Dingle said, he was told years ago not to worry about it.
"They told me I was the only one who ever made a payment on one."
Dingle also called the loan's job-creation requirements "unrealistic," but he predicted those positions eventually will be created as the zoo grows.
Everything, he said, is in the process of being worked out.
"I'm confident the matter will be dropped and we will begin making payments shortly."
Deputy City Attorney Steve Jones was more cautious, but confirmed negotiations were in progress.
"The city wants the money that's due it, obviously," Jones said. "But we don't want to run the zoo out of business in collecting."
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