Kelly: Zoo good for city, taxpayers

� Parking lots were full outside the Henry Doorly Zoo on Thursday, a beautiful day. Inside, the tram driver spoke in superlatives.

The cat complex, he said, is the largest in North America. The Desert Dome is the largest glazed geodesic dome in the world. The aviary is the second-largest walk-through aviary in the world. More than 600,000 people rode the Skyfari chairlift in its first year. And so on.

Because 1.45 million people visited the Henry Doorly Zoo last year, you can't say Omahans take it for granted. But it's easy to forget what an impact the zoo makes on the Omaha area: $94�million a year.

That's according to Eric C. Thompson, director of the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He said the zoo also generates $1.6 million in local sales, use and lodging taxes and $3.85 million in such taxes for the state.

Meanwhile, the City of Omaha is providing $1.25 million to the zoo this year — not from direct taxes but from keno gambling revenues. For taxpayers, the zoo is the safest bet around.

The Kansas City Zoo gets $3.5�million from city coffers, and is asking for voter approval of a four-county sales tax to generate $17.6 million a year.

Said the Kansas City Star: "That would vault the zoo into the league of the acclaimed Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb., which is mostly privately funded, and bring it closer to the St. Louis Zoo, which is largely supported by a city and county property tax."

It took a long time to build the Omaha zoo, and it's still growing. A big infusion of tax dollars surely would help in Kansas City, but it takes a long time to "vault" to the next level. But KC Zoo director Randy Wisthoff, formerly assistant director at the Doorly, is working on it: "We ought to be a major league zoo."

Omahans are proud of their zoo — but may not know it's also a bargain.

� Omaha ranks seventh nationally in job markets in the latest "On Numbers" report from the American City Business Journals.

Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the ranking takes into account unemployment and private-sector job growth. Boston ranked first.

Said the report: "Omaha, Neb., at 4.9 percent, is the only major metro with an unemployment rate below 5 percent. Honolulu and Oklahoma City are next at 5.7 percent."

� In its four years, lots of people have filed through the lobby of Film Streams, the art-house movie theater north of downtown.

Last week founder-director Rachel Jacobson had a new experience in the lobby — boyfriend Steve Osberg surprised her with flowers. Then he invited her to walk outside to his bicycle.

Steve is working on a master's degree in urban planning, and you might say he masterfully planned what came next. On the urban spot where they first kissed on Thanksgiving 2009, he proposed marriage — and she said yes.

The couple plan a 2012 wedding and will live in Omaha. Said Rachel: "Both of us are totally committed to Omaha."

� My Aug. 4 column about the Rev. Robert Condon, who was eulogized while he was alive and again at his funeral, drew a touching response from Tim Rooney of Omaha.

When Tim and wife Eileen married 28 years ago, Father Bob prayed for the deceased in the couple's families. He offered a special prayer for Tim's dad, Bill, who had died in an auto accident when Tim was 11.

What Tim didn't know until reading the column last week is that Condon, too, was 11 when his father died in an accident. Even after offering the prayer at the wedding, he didn't mention his own loss.

� Corrine Thompson last week ended a 65-year connection to Phil A. Kendall Plumbing in the Benson neighborhood.

She started work there as a junior at Benson High and rose to president and owner when she bought the company from Kendall a year before he retired.

"I worked for Phil for 39 years," she said, "and he worked for me for one year."

A widow, she worked each day until selling the company to Thomas Geyman Jr. and Rob Stolinski. She retired this week to Salt Lake City, Utah, at age 81.

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