Monroe County Is Betting It Has the Right Design This Time

Monroe County Executive Adam Bello chose the Seneca Park Zoo as the backdrop for his June 4, 2026 State of the County address — and used the occasion to announce that the zoo's long-awaited $100 million Tropics Exhibit and Main Entry Plaza expansion is nearing final design and will be going out to bid within the next few weeks. "My vision is not simply to preserve the Seneca Park Zoo — my vision is to transform it," Bello said. "And that vision is finally coming to life." If bids come in on budget and a contractor is selected this summer, the county is targeting a fall 2026 groundbreaking and a 2029 opening for the new facilities.

The announcement carries weight in part because of what came before it. The zoo expansion project has been in planning and design for over a decade, surviving cost overruns, design failures, public controversy, and a complete restart of the design process in 2025. The fact that it is now approaching the bid phase — with a credible funding structure in place — represents a meaningful milestone for a community that has been promised this project in various forms since 2015.

What Is Being Built: A Tropics Building, an Aquarium, and a New Entry

The expansion has two primary components. The first is a 48,000-square-foot Tropics Exhibit building that will include a 150,000-gallon Pacific Reef tank and introduce multiple new animal species to the zoo — the largest indoor tropics complex of its kind in the region. The second is a 22,000-square-foot Main Entry Plaza that will replace the zoo's current entrance with a modern gateway featuring membership and ticketing offices, classroom and education space, event space, administrative offices, and the Zoo Shop. The design was created by CambridgeSeven, a Massachusetts-based architectural firm with over 60 years of experience in animal habitat and aquarium design.

Additional features announced include a new shark petting area and expanded programming for new and different species that will be housed in the Tropics building. The exhibit and entry building are both inspired by the adjacent Genesee River valley — incorporating sustainable materials, native plantings, and an architectural approach designed to integrate with the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Seneca Park landscape surrounding the zoo.

How It's Being Paid For

The project's $100 million total is backed by a three-party funding structure. Monroe County is committing $34.5 million; Empire State Development has committed $42.5 million; and the Seneca Park Zoo Society has committed to raising an additional $23 million through a capital fundraising campaign. The county and state together are therefore covering approximately two-thirds of the project cost, with the zoo society responsible for the remaining third from private philanthropy.

Funding authorization from the Monroe County Legislature was originally granted in 2022. The current design contract with CambridgeSeven — worth $6.7 million — was approved by legislators in February 2025, on a 25-4 vote, with an amendment requiring county executive approval for any contract amendments exceeding $1 million to go back to the Legislature.

The Long Road: A Decade of Delays, $6 Million in Lost Design Fees, and a Complete Restart

The Seneca Park Zoo expansion story is a case study in the challenges of managing large public capital projects through multiple design cycles, budget changes, and procurement failures. The project was first initiated in 2015 under then-Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks. Over the following decade, the county spent $6.7 million on design work with a firm called Clark Patterson Lee — but when construction bids were finally received, the sole bid received came in more than $50 million over the $121 million budget that the Legislature had authorized in 2022.

The county chose to scrap the design entirely rather than seek additional appropriations. Of the $6.7 million spent on the original design, only approximately $800,000 in work was salvageable. The effective loss to taxpayers was approximately $6 million. Monroe County Legislator Rachel Barnhart publicly criticized the oversight structure that allowed those costs to accumulate without legislative approval, noting that a clause in the original design contract had allowed the county executive to authorize incremental amendments without returning to the Legislature for approval.

Monroe County undertook a fundamentally different procurement approach for the redesign. Rather than simply issuing a request for proposals, the county ran a design competition that included a design submission from each finalist — an unusually interactive method for selecting a design consultant on a public capital project. The process was intended to screen for affordability of construction alongside design quality, specifically to avoid a repeat of the previous cycle in which the design was aesthetically strong but unbuildable within budget. CambridgeSeven was selected from that process.

What a Fall Groundbreaking Would Mean for Rochester Construction

If the bid process succeeds and a contractor is selected this summer, the Seneca Park Zoo expansion will become one of the largest active public construction projects in the Rochester metro area. The combination of a custom aquarium build, a large-scale enclosed tropics habitat, a new public entry building, and significant site work within an Olmsted-designed park setting creates a complex and specialized construction scope that will draw interest from general contractors and specialty subcontractors across the region and potentially the northeastern United States.

Bello was candid about why he is confident this time around. "Last time there were big plans, they couldn't get anyone to build it within the budget. This time, we used a design competition process specifically designed to produce a buildable project." The county will know shortly whether that approach has worked as intended: bids are expected within the next month, with contractor selection and contract execution to follow before the end of summer.

The zoo expansion is one of several major Monroe County capital projects either recently completed or approaching construction in 2026. The $69 million Sydor Optics Advanced Technology Center at Monroe Community College's Brighton Campus is nearly complete. Construction on the RochesterWorks Career Center at MCC's Downtown Campus is scheduled to begin later this month, and the state has agreed to fund the remaining cost of rebuilding the historic Children's Pavilion at Highland Park. Taken together, these projects represent hundreds of millions of dollars in public capital investment in Monroe County's civic and educational infrastructure during the current construction cycle.

Sources

• WHEC News 10NBC — County executive discusses Seneca Park Zoo expansion during State of the County address (June 4, 2026)
• Monroe County — Adam Bello Announces CambridgeSeven as Design Consultant for Seneca Park Zoo Capital Project (January 17, 2025)
• WXXI News — Legislature approves contract for new Seneca Park Zoo expansion designs (February 12, 2025)
• WHAM 13 — Seneca Park Zoo project faces financial scrutiny over design costs (February 2025)