Every giraffe encounter at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has worked the same way for as long as most Colorado Springs families can remember. Walk up. Wait behind whoever got there first. Hand over a piece of lettuce. Watch a long purple tongue wrap around it. Step aside so the next family can do the same. It's the reason people who've lived here for twenty years still keep an annual membership just for that one exhibit. It's also the reason a Saturday afternoon visit sometimes turns into a longer wait for one animal than for anything else in the park.
That bottleneck is finally getting rebuilt, timed to the zoo's 100th year. The fix itself is real and worth understanding before you go. The timing most people will pick to go see it is the one part of this story worth arguing with.
The Line That's Finally Getting Fixed
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is opening the International Center for the Care and Conservation of Giraffe this year, a $40 million project that replaces the barn giraffes have used for decades with a 12,000-square-foot building, nearly three times the old indoor space. The outdoor yard grows by 25 percent, achieved by relocating the zoo's main entrance road westward to make room for the herd. A new feeding tower and a set of uphill switchback paths let giraffes move the way they do in the wild, something the old flat yard never allowed.
The number that actually matters for a family planning a visit is this: the old barn had three feeding stations. The new one has eleven. Outgoing CEO Bob Chastain has described the barn's clear roof, made of ETFE, a lightweight material more common in stadiums and airports than zoo exhibits, as the largest covering of its kind over an animal habitat in North America. It floods the space with natural light without the weight of glass.
Kacie Meffley, the zoo's giraffe care manager, put the practical reason for the redesign simply.
"This barn has taught us a lot about what we can change. Providing food in multiple locations is what this new barn is going to allow us to do."
That's the whole story in one sentence. The line families remember wasn't a design flaw anyone planned. It was a building from a different era finally getting replaced by one built around how eleven separate feeding points, instead of three, actually spread people out.
A Zoo That Funds Itself, Which Explains Why This Took So Long
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo dates to 1926, when Colorado Springs businessman Spencer Penrose began keeping bears, mountain lions, deer and elk in enclosures that lined The Broadmoor's golf course, close enough that hotel guests could wander over and look. The animals moved to the mountain the following year, not because of the monkey-bite story some old accounts repeat, but because Penrose needed the golf course clear for a major tournament. Giraffes didn't join the collection until 1954. Penrose's wife, Julie, went on to help establish the El Pomar Foundation, which still supports the zoo's work today.
By 1938 Penrose had deeded the zoo as a nonprofit public trust, and it remains one of the only zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums that receives no local tax support at all. Every admission ticket, membership and donation carries the full weight of running the place, which is also why a $40 million capital project takes years of saved revenue rather than a single bond vote. The zoo has leaned into that independence rather than fought it. Part of the new center includes a hydroponic growing operation expected to cover up to 80 percent of the giraffes' lettuce and about half the produce needed for the rest of the animal collection, a detail that only makes sense once you understand a zoo with no tax backstop has strong reasons to grow its own groceries.
The same year that a decades-long capital campaign finally lands also happens to be the year the zoo changed leadership. Bob Chastain, who joined the zoo three decades ago and spent twenty years as its president, retired this summer. Dave Ruhl, who has a background in zoo architecture and helped design the new giraffe center alongside Chastain, stepped into the role. A hundredth birthday, a finished capital project and a new CEO landing in the same calendar year is not a coincidence the zoo is trying to hide. It's the reason everything is getting folded into one moment instead of spread across the year.
Why The Centennial Week Itself Is The Wrong Week To Go
Here's where the timing gets tricky for anyone assuming they'll casually swing by on opening day. As of the final days of August, the zoo had not yet published exact dates for the centennial celebration it has promised for September, alongside the giraffe center's public debut. That alone should give a resident pause. If the zoo itself hasn't locked the calendar, nobody planning around "opening week" actually knows which days that covers yet.
There's also a recent precedent for how fast tickets disappear whenever this zoo runs a limited event. Free admission on New Year's Day sold out within an hour of being announced. Moonlight on the Mountain, the zoo's recurring 21-and-over evening event with live music and tastings from roughly 40 Front Range breweries and restaurants, sold through its VIP tickets and moved quickly on general admission when it returned this past June. A once-in-a-century exhibit opening during a compressed, still-unscheduled centennial week is not the calm first look a family wants after driving up Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Road.
The smarter play for anyone who already treats this zoo as part of ordinary life:
- Let the centennial week pass before making the trip. The exhibit isn't going anywhere, and the crowd built specifically for a milestone will thin fast once the milestone is over.
- Pick a weekday afternoon over an opening weekend. The old three-station line problem is exactly what the new eleven-station design was built to prevent, but no design survives a first Saturday crush unchanged.
- If mobility or stroller access matters to your visit, the redesigned paths, wider and built with gentler grades for a mountain property with real elevation change, are worth experiencing without a packed walkway working against you.
- Watch for the zoo's next after-hours event. Moonlight on the Mountain has returned as an annual fixture, and it's a way to see the new center without a daytime family crowd standing between you and the giraffes.
The Giraffes Aren't Going Anywhere
None of this changes what the zoo still is for the people who already love it. Thirteen giraffes currently call Cheyenne Mountain Zoo home, and the herd recently welcomed its 200th calf, born there and named Penny, a small reminder that a hundred years of this zoo's work is measured less in buildings than in animals raised. Every ticket already funds that work through the zoo's Quarters for Conservation program, which has generated more than $6 million for wildlife conservation since 2008 at 75 cents a ticket. That funding keeps flowing whether you visit during centennial week or three weeks after it, which is really the whole argument for waiting.
The giraffes will still be there once the crowds thin. So will the redesigned barn, the switchback paths and the eleven feeding stations that finally give this exhibit room to breathe. There's no version of this where skipping the party costs you anything but a shorter line.
Noticing the small, specific things that make a neighborhood feel lived-in, not just visited, is the same instinct that makes for good real estate guidance. If you're weighing what daily life actually looks like in different pockets of Colorado Springs, from the drive up to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo to everything else that makes a neighborhood feel like home, Leslie Neumann would be glad to talk it through. Browse more of what makes this area tick on the Colorado Springs neighborhood guide, and when you're ready, Let's Connect.
