$17.5M Additions Coming For Turtle Back Zoo: Parking, Train Ride

WEST ORANGE, NJ — Plans are in the works for more than $17.5 million of improvements at Essex County Turtle Back Zoo, officials announced last week.

According to a statement from Essex County officials, a third on-site parking deck will be developed and the zoo’s popular miniature train ride will be “modernized.”

“Usually when we stand before you at these events, we are talking about our animals,” Turtle Back Zoo Director Michael Kerr said at a Thursday press conference. “But these projects before us today are aimed at improving the experience for our guests and that helps with the experience they have here.”

“With the record numbers of visitors who continue to come, the two garages we have are no longer sufficient to meet our demand for parking,” Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr. said.

“Building a third deck will provide us with additional on-site parking and help alleviate congestion caused by patrons looking for a place to park,” DiVincenzo said. “Our miniature train ride has been a favorite for generations, and the changes underway will improve operations and make it easier for us to maintain the ride.”

Sheriff Armando Fontoura said the additional parking will help ease traffic congestion along Northfield Avenue.

Essex County officials offered the following details about the projects.

PARKING DECK

According to county officials:

“The popularity of Turtle Back Zoo has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors annually and helped establish new annual attendance records in 14 of the last 15 years. Two on-site parking garages were built in 2004 and 2015, but additional parking is still needed. The third parking deck, which will have spaces for about 500 vehicles, will be constructed where the zoo's maintenance and storage facilities were located. When completed, the first floor of the parking garage will be utilized as the new maintenance and storage area. The covered facility will make operations more efficient and provide better working conditions and cleaner storage areas.”

Comito Associates from Newark received a $498,725 professional services contract to design the parking deck and train maintenance building. DMD Contracting from Wayne was awarded a publicly-bid $14.5 million contract to build the parking deck. Funding for the parking deck came from the Essex County Operating Budget, officials said.

The parking deck is scheduled to be completed by November, officials said.

MINIATURE TRAIN

According to county officials:

“To accommodate the third on-side parking deck, several hundred feet of track needed to be relocated and a new maintenance building needed to be constructed. The new maintenance building replaces a structure that was basically a wooden shed to store the trains and keep them protected from the elements when not in use. The new building will still be used for storage, but it also will have a below ground pit that will enable mechanics to perform maintenance on the train engines and cars on-site. In the past, the engines needed to be transported off-site when work needed to be done on them. This will reduce the amount of times the trains are not in use.”

APS Construction from Paterson was awarded a publicly-bid $2,590,000 contract to construct the train building and update the tracks. Funding for the train modernization came from grants provided by the Essex County Recreation and Open Space Trust Fund and the Zoological Society of New Jersey, officials said.

Work to construct the maintenance building and install the new track started in September 2018 and is scheduled to be completed in March. Passengers will continue to board the train at its current station, officials stated.

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Photo: Essex County