The Denver Zoo hopes to reopen its long-dormant western entrance soon to expand access for pedestrians, cyclists and others who live close to City Park.
But first, the zoo — which now goes by the name — will have to work with concerned City Park neighbors, as well as Denver Parks & Recreation, to make sure the reopening doesn’t disrupt parking, traffic flow, and access to other parts of the park.
The western entrance of the 128-year-old nonprofit institution is located near the Lorikeet Adventure and Primate Panorama exhibits. It is tucked into the park, due east of the City Park Tennis Courts, and northwest of Duck Lake along an interior road accessible from 23rd Avenue It was used daily from 1958 through 2004, said zoo spokesman Jake Kubié. It got sporadic use from 2004 to 2012, but it’s been fully closed for 13 years.
One of the goals is to make access easier for people living near the western side of the park, said Cristal DeHerrera, the zoo’s chief operating officer. “Even if you live across York Street from City Park, you have to cross that street, walk a mile along 23rd, and then come in through the main entrance. I don’t think there are a lot of families who can do that.”
The distance between the corner of York and 23rd and the main zoo entrance at 2300 Steele St. is about 0.7 miles, according to Google Maps, or a 15-minute walk.
The sprawling parking lots around the main entrance typically fill up quickly in the summer and on weekends for the 80-acre zoo, which drew 1.6 million people last year. So the idea of reopening the western entrance has been floated in the City Park master plan since 2018, DeHerrera said. But only recently has the zoo moved to make it a reality. A small parking lot, with 79 spaces, has been refurbished in advance of the reopening.
There’s no timeline or cost estimate, but after gathering community input through meetings and surveys, the zoo plans to launch a one-year pilot program to experiment with the best ways to operate the entrance — and to decide whether it should be there at all.
It will be staffed with ticket-takers who can answer questions and hand out maps, but otherwise will not require too many additional resources, DeHerrera added.
But neighbors are concerned that a western entrance would encourage people to park in the streets and create problems for tennis players, picnickers, volleyball groups and other non-zoo visitors who use the parking lots in that part of the park.
Still, the zoo deserves credit for doing right by City Park with continual improvements, and by looking for solutions to traffic and crowding issues, said David Scarbeary, the incoming president of City Park Friends and Neighbors, a registered neighborhood organization that advocates for people living on all sides of the park.
Scarbeary, who often buzzes through the park on his scooter to ask users what they think of its condition, just wants to make sure the zoo lets everyone know what’s happening in advance.
“It sounds simple, right? Just open Gate 19!” he said, referring to the western entrance’s official name. “But we just want to make sure they do their due diligence on what traffic flow will look like, and the implications for parking. Not everyone knows they’re even thinking about this.”
Zoo officials will discuss the proposal at a public meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2, with DeHerrera and Kubié in attendance. It will take place in the Multimedia Room at the Carla Madison Recreation Center, 2401 E. Colfax Ave.
“The zoo has shown they can make significant investments to improve City Park, so we need this and other decisions to be data-driven,” Scarbeary said. “This idea has also been on the Denver Parks & Recreation website for years, so it’s not new, but it is important to get the word out.”
A draft version of the public survey for the pilot program is available at . (Note: the pilot program hasn’t officially begun, despite the July 2025 start date mentioned in the survey.)
