ZooTampa at Lowry Park

ZooTampa at Lowry Park is the nonprofit zoo on Sligh Avenue in Tampa, run by the Lowry Park Zoological Society of Tampa, an independent 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

The zoo gives its address as 1101 W. Sligh Avenue, Tampa, FL 33604. According to its About page, the zoo now encompasses 56 acres of naturalistic animal exhibits, with park areas devoted to Asia, Africa, Australia and Florida, cares for more than 1,000 animals and participates in nearly 100 Species Survival Programs of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which accredits it. The zoo lists its phone as (813) 935-8552. Across the road, the City of Tampa's Lowry Park Trail page describes a 0.9-mile asphalt trail along the Hillsborough River in Lowry Park, 7252 N Boulevard, open sunrise to sunset and served by HART Routes 44 and 45.

The Tampa institution has had three distinct lives: a small city zoo in Plant Park, a municipal zoo beside Fairyland at Lowry Park from 1957, and the rebuilt nonprofit zoo that reopened in 1988. The table below lists the main dates as the zoo's history timeline gives them.

The zoo began in 1930, when the City of Tampa opened a zoo at Plant Park on the grounds of the University of Tampa, and Mayor Nick Nuccio moved it to Lowry Park in 1957.

The zoo's history timeline says the early Plant Park collection was primarily indigenous animals, such as raccoons and alligators, along with an aviary of exotic birds. After the 1957 move to Lowry Park, the Tampa City Zoo was maintained by the city's Parks Department and shared the park with Fairyland.

The City Clerk biography of Nick Chillura Nuccio, Tampa's 47th and 49th mayor, dates his first term from October 2, 1956, to October 1, 1959, and his second from October 1, 1963, to October 3, 1967. It says the Fairyland amusement park and Lowry Zoo were built under his guidance, as part of a priority on recreational facilities such as swimming pools and parks, and that his 1957 and 1958 budget of $23,000,000 was the largest in the city's history to that time.

Fairyland was the city amusement park that shared Lowry Park with the Tampa zoo from 1957, built under Mayor Nick Nuccio alongside the Lowry Zoo.

The City Clerk describes Fairyland as an amusement park, and the zoo's timeline says the zoo shared Lowry Park with it after the 1957 move. The same timeline says the zoo grew gradually through the following decades but struggled to meet the developing professional standards of modern zoos, and that as the animal population grew through the 1970s the Tampa Bay community embraced the need to upgrade habitats and show animals in natural settings.

Little of Fairyland remains at Lowry Park. ZooTampa's timeline notes that the Florida Environmental Education Center, known as Zoo School, opened in 2000 on the area once occupied by Fairyland. The About page says Zoo School, a year-round, full-time, licensed childcare center for children ages one through five, was the first full-time, licensed childcare center operated by a U.S. zoo.

The Tampa zoo was rebuilt through a public-private partnership in which a citizens' association took over management for the City of Tampa and reopened a modern zoo on March 5, 1988.

The About page says that in 1982 community leaders created the Lowry Park Zoo Association to take over management of the zoo for the City of Tampa; the timeline lists the association's formation under both 1981 and 1982, at the suggestion of the Tampa Parks Department, Mayor Bob Martinez and private citizens. The association embarked on a $20 million capital campaign, and the City of Tampa committed $8 million. In 1984 the zoo board developed a comprehensive 24-acre master plan.

The rebuilt zoo reopened on March 5, 1988 with a Free-Flight Aviary, Asian Domain, Primate World and the Children's Village and Petting Zoo, and the association became the Lowry Park Zoological Society of Tampa, Inc., a private, nonprofit organization. Accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums followed in 1989. The About page describes the 1988 facility as a modern, 24-acre zoo.

Growth on the Sligh Avenue site continued for three decades. The timeline lists the first phase of Safari Africa in May 2002, an expansion it says created the current 61 acre site, although the About page now gives 56 acres; state recognition as a center for biodiversity and conservation in 2004; more than one million visitors for the fiscal year ending September 2006; Penguin Beach and the Ituri Forest in 2007; the new name ZooTampa at Lowry Park in 2018; and attendance above 1.2 million in 2021.

The Straz Manatee Critical Care Center at ZooTampa rescues and rehabilitates sick, injured and orphaned manatees, and Hillsborough County says it has rescued more than 635 since 1991.

The zoo's timeline records that the Manatee and Aquatic Center, home to the David A. Straz, Jr. Manatee Critical Care Center, opened in 1991, that it passed 300 manatees taken in by 2013, and that it surpassed 600 manatees cared for in 2024. ZooTampa's Florida conservation page calls the Tampa center one of just four federally permitted manatee critical care facilities in the US and one of only two able to take in and care for orphaned calves, working inside the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership of nonprofit, private, state and federal entities. In 2024, the page says, the zoo's team assisted FWC with 67 rescues, transports and verifications. The same page still gives an older running total of more than 500 manatees rescued, with more than 300 returned to Florida waters.

Hillsborough County recognized the work in April 2026. A county news release says the Board of County Commissioners awarded ZooTampa the 2026 Theodore Roosevelt Hillsborough Forever Conservation Award for the Straz center, and that the zoo had recently completed an expansion of its Florida Waters exhibit that added critical care pools visitors can see into.

Beyond the manatee hospital, ZooTampa at Lowry Park runs a veterinary campus, the Zoo School childcare center and school programs, and is planning a $125 million expansion with Hillsborough County support.

Veterinary care is centered on the Jacarlene Animal Care Campus, opened in 2017 with the Catherine Lowry Straz Veterinary Hospital and the Tiedemann-Cotton Animal Care Annex. The zoo's timeline says the 12,000 square foot hospital was completed in 2014 and became the first ever zoo hospital to receive American Animal Hospital Association accreditation. The same year a two-year graduate clinical fellowship was set up with the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, combining zoological and aquatic medicine with study of manatee health.

The About page says ZooTampa has educated more than 1.8 million school-aged children across Tampa Bay since 1988, and it posts the Lowry Park Zoological Society's Form 990 filings for 2020 through 2024 and financial statements for fiscal years 2023 through 2025.

The next phase is a county partnership. On April 10, 2026, Hillsborough County reported that commissioners approved negotiations for a public-private partnership to fund ZooTampa's $125 million expansion, including a proposed South American realm and upgrades to the African and Asia realms, with the county matching dollar for dollar up to $75 million, roughly $5 million a year for 15 years. No final agreement appears on the county pages checked as of October 18, 2026.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the ZooTampa About, History and Florida Conservation pages, two April 2026 Hillsborough County news releases, the City Clerk biography of Mayor Nick Nuccio and the City of Tampa Lowry Park Trail page.