Better to develop new wildlife attraction in Mandai

AsiaOne 9 Sep 14

WHILE I applaud the vision in moving Jurong Bird Park to the Mandai cluster of Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) institutions ("New plans for Mandai will be 'sensitive to area' "; last Saturday), I am concerned about the fundamental premise of this planning strategy.

When I became chief executive of WRS in 2000, I started looking into ways to increase the bird park's annual local attendance, which made up only 20 per cent of its one million visitors.

From straw polls of friends, I established that the last time most people visited the park was when they were in Primary 6.

One fundamental issue with a bird park is that it holds fairly limited appeal to repeat visitors from Singapore. The tourism appeal, especially to the Asian market, which likes more bang for the buck (650 species of birds and highest man-made waterfall), is much greater. In contrast, a zoo has greater local appeal because of its greater variety of animals.

Thus, although a major overhaul of the bird park is timely, I do not think this will greatly increase its overall appeal, visitor figures and profitability.

From my experience as a zoo designer, an overhaul of the Jurong site would cost about $50 million, while moving it to Mandai would cost about $200 million.

So the question is: Why move?

It is logical to create a cluster of wildlife attractions, and develop some eco-friendly resorts to allow tourists to take in all the attractions over two to three days. This clustering also streamlines the WRS management operations and will probably result in some savings on manpower and infrastructure.

The alternative is to leave the bird park in Jurong, upgrade it with $50 million and develop a new wildlife attraction on the available Mandai land.

As far as I am aware, the River Safari cost $150 million, of which WRS had to borrow $50 million on a commercial, repayable loan. If this is the Government's funding policy, I would put my money into a new wildlife attraction in Mandai.

There are many new concepts that can be developed.

One is a project our company has been conceptually developing, which we call the Unzoo. This simulates a walk into a national park, where animal encounters are orchestrated along the way. By design, it is a totally back-to-nature experience and thus discourages architectural- and engineering-inspired infrastructural development.

I would hate to see Supertrees, a la Gardens by the Bay, in Mandai. My basic concern is: Is Singapore - and are Singaporeans - running out of creative ideas?

Bernard Harrison
Principal Partner, Creativity & Design
Bernard Harrison and Friends