BELMONT — The owner of an “interactive petting zoo where animals play with the people” is seeking to move her business from western Bartholomew County to the Belmont area.
Kathleen Bowen established Zoo’Opolis Exotic Petting World in 2015 in her home on County Road 50 South, about 1 1/2 miles from the Brown-Bartholomew county line. She’s planning to buy land along State Road 46 West on contract from Ron and Connie Weddle so she can relocate, according to documents on file with the Brown County Planning Department.
The addresses of the properties from which the acreage will be carved out are 5718, 5722 and 5730 State Road 46 West. The part she’s seeking to rezone totals about 5 acres.
The land would need to be changed from residential to general business before Bowen could operate her business on it. A hearing before the Brown County Area Plan Commission will take place at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 23 at the County Office Building in Nashville.
The move isn’t yet final; it hinges on the zoning board’s decision, Bowen said.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Zoo’Opolis houses more than 100 animals, but Bowen estimated she could fit all of them in her van, they’re so small — “nothing dangerous to people,” she added, “no lions, tigers or bears.”
Most of them currently live indoors in temperature-controlled spaces. Those include house cat-sized bengal cats, parrots, rabbits, chinchillas, skunks, ferrets, a raccoon, iguanas, turtles and tortoises, and other species.
At her current location, Bowen allows guests to enter “large, indoor play rooms” to “interact with a variety of friendly, loving animals,” she told the plan commission in a letter.
One of her aims in creating the zoo was to teach people about species they might never encounter face to face, as well as to deter them from thinking it would be fun and easy to have wild animals as pets.
For instance, she’s learned that to keep a fox loose in the house means that you can’t have furniture, because it will shred it; and you have to put up with an animal that messes in its food and water bowls all day, she said.
“There ought to be a place where you can find out some of that,” she said.
“… Those kinds of things, that’s what Zoo’Opolis is all about.”
“It’s not that I just purchase animals and said, ‘OK, now you’re going to get along with people; they go to extensive training that starts really young so that that can happen,” she said. “… These animals are excited to explore with people and they aren’t being forced.”
There are several animals that guests can see inside which have attached exterior habitats, including Muntjac and fallow deer, rabbit-like Patagonian maras, wallabies and kangaroos, a zebra, mini pigs, a fox, and a wolf hybrid. Bowen said she’d like to retrofit an existing barn on the property to allow for indoor-outdoor spaces.
Animals currently living outside include two alpacas, four goats, three Jacob sheep, two mini donkeys and eight quail.
Bowen plans to install a modular classroom to house the animals that are under 20 pounds, perhaps adding other such buildings over time, she wrote to the plan commission. They will be placed on permanent foundations and “the exteriors modified to create attractive buildings.” One of these would be used as the space where people interact with the animals, she said.
A mobile home would be brought in to serve as a feed storage facility; its exterior also would be changed, she wrote.
She also plans to build five “horse-type” sheds, up to 8 by 10 feet, as shelters for any animals out grazing.
A 6-foot-tall perimeter fence will enclose the area in accordance with United States Department of Agriculture guidelines, she wrote.
Bowen feels that the Belmont property is the perfect place to move her zoo because it’s gently sloped to allow for drainage, but also flat enough to be wheelchair- and stroller-accessible. It doesn’t contain a lot of trees that can drop limbs that damage her fences; much of it is pasture land.
“If anybody was going to buy property to do a petting zoo, they would never buy the property I (currently) have,” she said; her Bartholomew County place is hilly and has no grass.
The Belmont land also is in a great spot for visibility from the highway and close to Brown County State Park, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Even now, about 40 percent of the zoo’s guests are from out of town and 36 percent are from out of state, some driving 4 1/2 to 5 hours just to see her attraction, she said.
“I love the location, and who wouldn’t want to be a part of Brown County?” she said about the Belmont property. “I think it’s a perfect fit.”
Bowen was required to send letters to about 15 surrounding neighbors informing them of her plans. Those include several residential properties and three businesses: the Hickory Shades Motel, Designscape, and Belmont Mall LLC, which includes a car sales lot.
Bowen said last week she had heard from some neighbors who had concerns, including noise and danger to people. She doesn’t expect either to be a problem. She said she’s only open until 5, so crowds won’t be at the zoo later; the animals don’t often make noise at night; and there aren’t large animals on her property that would be a danger to the public.
The idea of a timber wolf scares some people, she said, but “if you actually do your homework, you find out that if you’re an elk and it’s hungry, you’re in danger; but God made them instinctively afraid of man,” she said. “We educate people about them.”
Brown County’s zoning ordinance does not address zoos or petting zoos specifically, said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann, but it does allow for “other similar business uses” in general business. She believes that could include a recreational or “miscellaneous” business use.
