Monday, June 24, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
WHAT DO WHEELING, W.Va., Manhattan, Kan., and Salisbury, Md., have that Las Vegas doesn't?
A real live, accredited zoo.
According to 1995 Census estimates, if you put them all together, the Las Vegas area still has more than 10 times as many people.
But no real zoo.
What we have is the Southern Nevada Zoological Park, a pitiful little facility on Rancho Drive with a shrinking animal population, a growing list of U.S. Department of Agriculture complaints and a lawsuit with the city over a welched loan.
Zoo Director Pat Dingle had great plans when he started, but many animal lovers now see him as a roadblock to any professional, world-class zoo in Las Vegas.
"Basically, if you're going to have a quality zoo," said Pat Quillen, a leading authority on small wild cats who withdrew three animals from Dingle's care last month, "you have to have someone heading that up who understands the zoo world, who understands the animals and who cares for the animals."
You need, in other words, someone with impeccable credentials and unassailable credibility. Because zoos take money -- lots of it.
While she's given up on Dingle, Quillen, who runs a small cat preserve in Escondido, Calif., still thinks Las Vegas would be "an ideal place" for a world-class zoo.
We've got the base population, we've got the constant flow of tourists and we've definitely got the money floating around -- even if you don't count the casinos.
A few years back, for example, the Lied Foundation Trust donated a cool $15 million to build an exhibit in the Omaha, Neb., zoo.
So why, one wonders, wouldn't a zoo-loving Las Vegas foundation help get one going here?
Lied officials declined to comment, but it all comes down to credibility.
Foundations want to see business plans, feasibility studies and lots of community support -- something Dingle's struggling zoo has obviously never enjoyed.
Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones summing it up well: "I think Pat Dingle tried to go beyond his capacity."
But don't expect the city to take the lead in bringing a zoo to Las Vegas. With so many growth-related problems on its plate, Jones said creating a zoo isn't high on the to-do list.
The casinos aren't likely to take the lead, either, she said. There isn't enough space in the resort corridor to build a quality zoo, and the casinos have never shown much interest "in sending people off to spend three hours somewhere else."
If you build it away from the resorts, the mayor asked, will tourists make the trip to see it? If they don't, could it survive?
Besides, she wondered, who wants to go to a zoo when it's 110 degrees?
"We've got some positives," Jones said, "but we also have some negatives."
There may be some balances, however, to the mayor's reality checks.
It gets even hotter in Phoenix, for example, and its zoo drew more than 1 million people last year, said spokeswoman Alice Sluga.
Even better, the 125-acre zoo doesn't take a dime of tax money or government subsidies, and still turned a $1 million profit.
True, the traffic slows down in the summer, Sluga said, but the "peak season" of October through May makes up for it.
A key to the Phoenix zoo's success, however, was the early deep-pocket backing of appliance magnate Robert Maytag and his wife, Nancy, who provided two building blocks every zoo needs: land and money.
"You need a really good site that's convenient for the public," said Jane Ballentine of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, "and a lot of money. It's a very, very expensive proposition."
The bill to build something like the San Diego Zoo, Ballentine said, could run more than $200 million.
George Stoecklin, a former veterinarian for Dingle's zoo, sees a scenario that could make it happen.
First, you form a nonprofit organization and get land from the federal Bureau of Land Management at very low cost -- something for-profit developers have made a career of around here.
Second, you raise $40 million or so, which shouldn't be impossible with all the Maytag-like magnates in this town.
Finally, you go to voters for a one-time $200 million bond issue.
If the school district can ask for triple that amount every two years, he said, maybe the voters would welcome a one-shot deal to build a permanent attraction for people of all ages.
Hey, it could happen.
After all, more than 116 million people visit zoos and aquariums in North America every year, according to AZA figures. That's more than attend all pro football, baseball and basketball games combined.
Undeniably, a lot of people like zoos. The question is, do any of them live in Las Vegas?
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