Who owns Zooceanarium?
Jackson might be signing a contract with Zooceanarium to operate the Jackson Zoo. WLBT reported yesterday:
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said the city is working on a “short timetable” when it comes to signing an international firm to manage the Jackson Zoological Park.
“We feel a sense of urgency to get this done and are expressing that sense of urgency to the contractor that won the bid process,” he said. “We are extending what is a reasonable timeframe by which we need to complete this process.”
The contractor in question is ZoOceanarium Group. The city has been in talks with the Dubai-based firm since early 2019.
Efforts to finalize a contract have been delayed numerous times.
Previously, the mayor said ZoOceanarium couldn’t come to Jackson to discuss the agreement because of COVID-19. Recently, he said the firm wouldn’t sign the contract until Jackson received its permanent USDA exhibitor’s license.
The USDA granted the city its exhibitor’s permit in September. The zoo reopened to the public in August.
“We’re trying to do this on an escalated scale,” Lumumba said. “We’re very serious about moving this forward now.”
Lumumba said firm officials reached out to Chief Administrative Officer Robert Blaine this week and were working to schedule a walk-through of the West Jackson park.
He hopes that an inspection will occur in the “next couple of weeks.”
He said it’s important to get a management firm on board as soon as possible so zoo employees can again receive benefits.
The park has about 25 employees, stalwarts who stayed on after the zoo closed to the public a year ago. The city was forced to close the 100-year-old destination last October after the Jackson Zoological Society disbanded and its exhibitor’s permit expired. (KF: Not true. The Society surrendered the license to USDA. There was no expiration. Actually, none of this paragraph is true. The Zoo closed because the city had no license and it did not renew the Society's lease. It did not close because the Society disbanded. Typical Anthony Warren. Sloppy.)
However, the city kept on former society staffers as contract employees to help care for animals and maintain park facilities until new management could be brought on.
As contract workers, those employees receive a steady paycheck, but are not eligible for health insurance or other benefits that would typically come from being a city employee.
Said Lumumba, “The timetable is very critical … because we don’t want to continue to leave them in the vulnerable place where they don’t have the benefits they deserve.”
Kingfish note: Who owns Zooceanarium? Posted below are the corporate documents posted on the Missouri Secretary of State website. The company's proposal stated who the corporate officers were but was silent on the matter of ownership. Councilman Dekeither Stamps asked Chief Administrative Officer Dr. Robert Blaine that very question. Dr. Blaine said it was on the Missouri Secretary of State website.
The city of Jackson is going to pay this company millions of dollars for several years to operate the Jackson Zoo. The City Council should not approve ANY contract unless the company coughs up some documentation on ownership or an operating agreement. The people have a right to know who owns the company. Period. The folks who own it are probably fine upstanding citizens but if we have learned one thing in Mississippi, never assume anything.
27 comments:
“We feel a sense of urgency to get this done”
My question would be why? Do they think people are going to flock to the zoo? Now?
It's all about the victories you can win. Absolutely nothing will be done about the crime in Jackson because nothing politically acceptable can be done about it. So focus will be directed on the Zoo, JSU, and other distractions that can make money for the hustlers.
Jackson's leadership are like worthless employees. If they were competent they wouldn't need so many damn excuses. Their results would speak for themselves.
sounds like this outfit hasn’t even been to the zoo...
Do you get the feeling that this "firm" doesn't really want this contract?
At the end of the day The City of Jackson will end up holding the bag on this contract- as it usually does with any contracting entity.
"Said Lumumba, “The timetable is very critical … because we don’t want to continue to leave them in the vulnerable place where they don’t have the benefits they deserve.”"
so...this entire project and all money spent will be to preserve these 25 jobs? That seems to be the mayors primary motivation to keeping the zoo going?
The zoo should be a project bc it benefits the citizens of Jackson...not bc it benefits its own employees.
I'm not knocking legalzoom.com - I'd never heard of it, so have no real opinion of it. But from what I read quickly, they primarily market to small family businesses. ZoOceanarium has been positioned by the Jackson leadership as a company with a lot of experience in this area.
It's been years, but I worked for some folks who incorporated their business in Mississippi. I'm almost certain the paperwork required a listing of corporate officers. How is it the Missouri paperwork only lists someone as "assistant secretary" with Legalzoom.com?
There has been nothing stopping the city from making them employees since it took over the zoo.
Does anybody know if Marcus Wallace, dba MAC have a zoo certificate on his wall? He has several in the construction business that he is not really licensed with. Maybe MAC Consultants has a hand in zoo operations.
This is a Dubai company. Not a small business, at all. However, Mississippi rubes always fall for a sales pitch delivered by some good ole boys and booth bunnies for overseas investors.
Why exactly would Dubai oil princes be interested in buying a tiny zoo in a failing city? Why?
Ask questions. And think of a bigger picture.
Usually we are handing out tax breaks and engineering tax dodges for foreign companies. Sometimes, we get Haley and Terry McAuliffe and Bennie Thompson and Bill Clinton all together to hand out visas to Chinese rich guys and members of the Chinese Communist Party.
Or, we let an Australian toll road consortium convince Jackson that we just HAVE to have a bridge over the Pearl so we can have a TOLL to pay to get to the airport 5 miles away. That we can get to, free, by interstate, faster. Why would they do that? Oh, to open us up to 75 years unlimited tolls like Orange Beach.
So, again, WHY would Dubai investors want to do this? Surely, just "for the animals!" For the Chillun!!! Gosh, there could not be a bigger picture there, eh?
Hurry! Hurry! Some folks from Bovina might make another offer to let them take over the zoo there!!! Sign quick!
Speaking of Anthony Warren & dropped balls, he reported at the Northside Sun about the Jackson City Clerk setting up an operation whereby frequent flyers could apply for TSA's Precheck program at City Hall. The program allows flyers to skip the check-in strip & search procedures at airports. How's that working as a revenue producer for the city? Warren never asked how much revenue the city expected to generate even though the effort was a major goal set for the City Clerk.
Thought Wallace (who lives in Madison) was persona non grata because he refused to kiss Junior's ass?
@10:39, someone I know inside City Hall suspects the same.
They don't even have any contact information on their website. No address, phone number, person in charge, nada, nothing. This is the type of company we're turning our tax dollars over to???https://www.zooceanarium.com/index.html
I can't believe some enterprising reporter hasn't dug into this. First Google them. Learn about the St. Louis Aquarium connection Then Google the St. Louis Aquarium. Then Google the Board of Trustees. Then make a few phone calls. Dig, dig, dig, dig into this. It's not rocket science and if I didn't have a full time job and a family to support, I would be picking up phone. CL, Northside Sun, maybe a councilperson? Why aren't they calling them?
KF demanding more financial disclosure from a zoo management company than the president of the United States. Get some priorities.
Yeah. How many corruption stories have been reported over the years here where due diligence that could've prevented it was not done?
10:07 AM
My belief is these are feather-in-the-cap victories to bandy about for re-election. Though I'm not sure if Jackson mayor election is this year or next. Mississippi seems to have some sort of election every year.
Spot on KF. NO ones seems to want to do any due diligence. Beef plant, bogus car plant in Tunica, KIOR, etc. etc. I was at a Mississippi Forestry Convention just before the state legislature handed over a bunch of incentives to KIOR. The headline speaker was the the CEO or President of KIOR (can't quite recall but he was a high up mucky-muck) and after his presentation, he left the stage without taking a single question from the audience. NOT ONE. He's in front of the one group that could be his head cheerleaders and wood suppliers and he kept to the script and hightailed it out of there. Huge red flag for me. Maybe he didn't want to risk someone smarter than him questioning him on the science.
Wouldn't you expect the vendor (Zooceanarium) to be pushing the client (City of Jackson) to move forward with the real? That's how it usually works.
Instead it looks like Jackson is having to beg the zoo company to take our money. Not a good sign.
I still see the animals eventually being shipped off to other zoo's that will actually take care of them in a better manner and where they will be enjoyed.
" the state legislature handed over a bunch of incentives to KIOR. The headline speaker was the the CEO or President of KIOR (can't quite recall but he was a high up mucky-muck) and after his presentation, he left the stage without taking a single question from the audience. NOT ONE."
Pretty sure his name was Fred Cannon.
But that entire fiasco falls on Haley Barbour.
" the vendor (Zooceanarium) "
That name is even funny,
I have two outside cats and a beta fish in the master bath.
Hell, I have may a "Zooceanarium" too.
The way things seem to work, in Mississippi, now, is that outsiders offering various sorts of specialty services, pay Mississippi officials relatively small bribes, in order to be allowed to steal relatively huge amounts of public monies.
Bribes can take all sorts of forms: access to pretty girls; weekends on somebody's yacht; weekends in somebody's otherwise-empty condo, in a Central Park South supertall, kept specifically for wowing and influencing politicians; trips to Vegas; trips on private planes; favorable mention in media (or unfavorable mention for officials' enemies); invitations to fabulous parties; cash; arranged admission to certain schools, for officials' children; hunting on somebody's private preserve; internships for officials' children; jobs for officials' wives and children; campaign donations; purchase of an official's wife's paintings; picking up bar and restaurant tabs... - in addition to plain old-fashioned cash.
October 15, 2020 at 2:13 PM
Sounds like somebody from WLBT reads these comments:
https://www.wlbt.com/2020/10/16/city-zooceanarium-sign-contract-or-well-manage-zoo-ourselves/
It does appear the WLBT article did crib some notes from this site but at least they took the ball and ran with it. The St. Louis address is another front. Just an address with maybe a desk or two:
https://www.regus.ru/en-ru/virtual-office/united-states/missouri/st-louis/missouri-st-louis-downtown-deloitte-building
How many red flags do we need here???
First time I've ever posted here. All of this zoo stuff seems so sketchy. There was an amazing plan to finally get our zoo somewhere where it could be enjoyed, lefleurs, plans were set. Our Mayor didn't like the fact that they were moving it out of west Jackson because it benefitted local business....please tell me the last time anyone who visited the zoo actually went to a local business there (not sure there are any. Just run down buildings). He strong arms, sues, the people running the zoo that wanted to move the zoo into vacating ownership of all the animals they owned so the city could assume ownership. All this so he can turn the reigns over to some sketchy Dubai based company with a website that literally offers 0 details into who they actually are. Welcome to Jackson, MS!
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