Cleveland Metroparks is exploring a themed hotel at the Cleveland Zoo that could let guests look directly into animal exhibits, including the bear habitat, as the park system seeks to widen the zoo’s draw and income. Sean McDermott told the Metroparks board on Thursday morning that the idea is still in an exploratory stage, but he said the concept could create a one-of-a-kind stay for visitors.
The proposal is not new. Metroparks did a hotel feasibility study in 2019 that looked at a property of around 135 rooms, and McDermott said that review suggested the idea was possible, though not guaranteed. The zoo has drawn as many as 1.4 million visitors, including in 2024, and Metroparks is now testing whether that audience could support a hotel if the park system brought in an outside operator and split the revenue.
McDermott said the park system would not run the hotel itself. Instead, it would seek proposals and hire an operator if the project moves forward, a model he cast as a way to capture upside without taking on day-to-day management. He said Metroparks hopes to have proposals in hand by the end of next month.
The zoo’s location gives the idea an added layer of appeal. It connects with Brookside Reservation, which has soccer and ballfields that draw tournaments, and McDermott said that combination could help create a built-in market for rooms. He presented four possible locations for the hotel, three within the zoo’s footprint and one in Brookside Reservation, with the zoo sites offering views of exhibits.
That is where the plan runs into its most obvious tension. Metroparks is talking about a hotel that could market itself on close-up access to animals and family-friendly features, yet it is still only asking the market whether such a project can work at all. McDermott said the old study was “not a slam dunk, not a no,” and when board member Dan Moore jokingly suggested the tagline might be “sleep with a bear,” McDermott replied, “Sleep with the bear, not the fishes.”
For now, the answer is straightforward: Metroparks is no longer just imagining a hotel at the Cleveland Zoo. It is actively shopping the concept, and the next real test is whether developers think the zoo and Brookside together can fill those rooms.