Either it is now to be used for this purpose or housing research staff or a potential sell-off at market pricing only. The funds could be used to make a start on the much talked balked about Asian carnivores area AND hopefully a start on more imaginative primate exhibits (no, I do not mean great apes ..).
Selling off the family silver is rarely a good idea; doing so at a time of turbulence would certainly be ill-advised. Looking at the situation as an outsider, I would have thought it highly desirable for the zoo to hold property adjacent to its boundary, whether it be used to house a future director, or staff, or whatever.
The Twycross story over the past few years follows a fairly classic pattern for a business that has been developed by a charismatic individual, and has grown up without ever being fully under-pinned. The investment in offices - and the people who work in those offices (such as, possibly, graphic designers) has been criticised above. Such criticism may be fair - but it is almost certain that the zoo was lacking the support structures that any organisation of this size needs. I think one of the reasons why Chester has thrived so much over the past decades is because, following George Mottershead's standing down, Michael Brambell was able to get everything established for others to then come in and develop the zoo in exciting ways. I'm not sure that such development would have been possible had the back-room stuff not been sorted first, though.
I do not seek to claim that Twycross, today, is anything other than a deeply-flawed zoo, nor to suggest that the out-going director does not deserve the opprobrium that has even sent her way. I do not know enough about the inner workings of the zoo over the past years to pass comment.
I do know, though, that in any business people get sacked or made redundant, fairly or unfairly, and that those people will not ever come to love the person who has helped them on their way!
And also that when change comes, even when it is vital - and I would be surprised if anyone were to argue that the zoo as it existed at the end of Molly Badham's time did not need fundamental change - people who lose out because of that change are dissatisfied.
The simple fact is, though, that if the zoo were better - if it had addressed the issues over the ape housing, and it had done the carnivore thing, and it had proper groups of monkeys in decent housing and so on - nobody would care about staff who had been made redundant, or bungalows that had been bought, or graphic designers that had been employed, or zombie themed fun and games.
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