The zoo may be “dilapidated” and London Breed might not even be mayor anymore once they get here, but the SF Zoo claims they are almost at their $20 million goal to bring two giant pandas to the facility next year.
The San Francisco panda-monium broke out shortly after last year’s APEC conference, when Chinese diplomats indicated they might send a pair of pandas to the San Francisco Zoo. Mayor London Breed promptly traveled to China and lobbied for the pandas, and claimed she’d secured the commitment while still there.
The only remaining hurdles seemed the $25 million in financial commitments needed to build the bears their new enclosure and habitat, though more trouble arrived in the form of a blistering assessment of the SF Zoo by a city oversight committee this month that called the zoo “dilapidated” and “unsafe for visitors and animals.”
Yet today the Chronicle reports that the zoo has nearly hit its fundraising goal to build that enclosure and habitat for the two pandas. The announcement (coming six days before the mayoral election, where there is an emphasis on courting the Chinese American vote) is summarized by the Chronicle, which says “The San Francisco Zoo has close to the $20 million in donor commitments it needs to build an enclosure to host a pair of giant pandas from China next year.”
“The San Francisco Zoo is making great strides in our ongoing, productive discussions with our counterparts in China,” SF Zoo deputy director Vitus Leung said in a statement. “We are confidently on track to meet all obligations, including fundraising goals, to ensure the successful and safe return of these cherished cultural ambassadors to our vibrant city.”
One important factor in nearing the $25 million goal is that it is now just a $20 million goal. Per the Chron, Chinese wildlife officials involved with the process apparently “appear to be favoring” a simple remodel of one of the zoo’s facilities,rather than building a whole new enclosure.
But otherwise, details are scant, and no one has announced exactly how much has been raised. Per the Chronicle, “the zoo says its fundraising efforts are going as planned.” But it has been reported that all of the big names like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apparently declined solicitations for donations.
Breed’s spokesperson Parisa Safarzadeh confirmed to the Chronicle that Breed had not yet personally scored a donation, but told that paper that “there is a lot of excitement and interest around donation opportunities for Pandas.”
Moreover, after the SF Board of Supervisors approved a plan to let city agencies solicit private donations for the panda enclosure, the Chronicle adds that “those efforts do not appear to have gotten off the ground either.” That plan allowed the City Administrator’s Office, Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and SF Rec and Parks to solicit contributions. But none appear to have done so, therefore it's quite unclear where this almost-$20-million has supposedly come from.
And really, the heavy financial lifting comes once the pandas are already here. The Chronicle estimated in June that the cost of hosting the pandas for ten years, which is a typical-length loan from China, would be in the neighborhood of $70 million.
Don’t get us wrong, getting pandas at the SF Zoo would be a massively fun novelty. It would surely bolster the tourism economy, and many of us who haven’t gone to the zoo in years would certainly visit again.
But the lack of details in the zoo’s latest panda announcement makes one wonder if this declaration of near-success in panda fundraising is not so black-and-white.
Image: @LondonBreed via Twitter
