Griffy, a Masai giraffe, plays with keeper Rachel McClung in its new quarters.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — A new animal exhibit is to a zoo what a new stadium is to a sports franchise. It generates buzz, draws visitors, and, ideally, adds more revenue than it cost to build.

The Roger Williams Park Zoo, a regional gem tucked in the city’s largest park, hasn’t enjoyed that sort of attention in a long time, and Zoo Director Jack Mulvena would be the first to admit that.

Sure, there was the giant anteater that found a home in the Tropical America section last year. And the red panda that came this May.

But each new animal could be countered with the loss of another. Like the arthritic cheetah that was euthanized in May, its habitat still vacant today.

Or the polar bears — the polar bears! — that were sent elsewhere, to be replaced last year by a pair of majestic, though flightless, bald eagles. (The polar bears are expected to return, but not as soon as people would have hoped).

“Zoos live and die by new exhibits,” says Mulvena. “People like to see new things. It builds back interest. We’ve been at a bit of a standstill.”

He hopes that standstill ends with today’s dedication of a renovated Africa exhibit, the first phase of a multi-year, $35-million master plan financed in part by the taxpayers.

Set at the zoo’s entrance, the Africa exhibit was supposed to open before the summer, in time for the start of the peak visitor season. Its $11.06-million cost is about $1.5 million over budget, but will not affect the overall price of carrying out the master plan, says zoo spokeswoman Jan Mariani.

The centerpiece is the redesigned elephant and giraffe yards, which represent stark departures from their predecessors, giving nearly double the roaming space for the elephants (now nearly an acre for the three of them) and allowing visitors to get closer to the animals than ever before.

Gone are the perimeter moats –– those waterless chasms that used to separate visitors from the animals. Gone, too, is the foliage that limited sight lines.

In their place is a simple column-and-cable fence, an 11-foot deep, 140,000-gallon bathing pool for the elephants that is backed by waterfalls, and, in between the giraffe and elephant yards, a raised wooden viewing deck that provides the best vantage point for visitors.

The animals’ interior quarters have newer amenities, particularly heated floors that are, in parts, covered with sand or a rubberized mat, both of which provide a softer, warmer ground surface and ease the pressure on the massive animals’ joints.

“We’re helping the animals live better and live longer,” says Tim French, the zoo’s deputy director of animal programs. “This is many, many times better for their health.”

The renovation also includes a number of new animal exhibits, including new habitats for the zebras and the addition of wildebeests and African wild dogs.

The exhibit, which accounts for about a quarter of the zoo’s developed space, has taken more than four years, off and on, to complete.

Part of the challenge was working around the animals, which have remained throughout, according to Ron Patalano, director of operations.

But more specifically, the zoo has struggled to raise the capital for the full project.

Along with the $15 million it has raised in the form of voter-approved general obligation bonds (from 2004 and 2006), the zoo has raised $10 million in a capital campaign, leaving it about $10 million short of its target.

There is no concern that committed donors will not make good on their promises, but Mulvena says it has been a challenge, even before the economic tailspin of recent months, to scare up new donors, which was why the zoo has been slow to advance the project.

This is not to say that changes aren’t happening. The new animals, like the anteater and the red panda, are just a few recent additions, but there are others.

And the master plan, unveiled in 2001, calls for a new children’s zoo and a 5,000-square-foot veterinary hospital.

The $3.5-million outdoor children’s zoo will feature New England animals and play areas on about 1.5 acres currently covered by the Wetlands Trail exhibit and a temporary butterfly house.

The $3-million hospital will expand care services for the zoo’s more than 800 animals –– including surgery, quarantine and laboratory analysis –– that are currently housed in the basement of the administration building.

Designs for those projects are to be completed by the end of the year, with construction to commence in the spring. The zoo is aiming for a 2010 opening.

The 134-year-old Roger Williams Zoo catapulted onto the national scene of zoos with a major redesign, starting in the late 1980s, that brought animals out of the exhibit-style cages and introduced the general configuration –– in outdoor habitats organized according to regions of the world –– that visitors see today.

It is generally regarded as the premier zoo in New England and among the top attractions in the state, with an average of 597,000 visitors annually and a yearly budget of $8.12 million, of which about a quarter comes from the city.

But since that major redesign nearly three decades ago, there have been no major improvements at the zoo. In fact, in some respects, the zoo has declined in quality.

The closing of the polar bear exhibit due to old age three years ago was a telling example since it had been the most stunning piece of that first redesign. So it is appropriate that the polar bears are to be the focus of the re-envisioned zoo.

A 100,000-gallon saltwater pool and tundra-style terrain would anchor a new North American Trail, which is the zoo’s oldest exhibit and home to its seals, bison, pronghorn and bald eagles.

The polar bear exhibit was slated to be the next project in the queue after the African exhibit, but the sheer cost of the endeavor (about $15 million) forced the zoo in just the past month to delay it in favor of the children’s zoo and hospital, says Mulvena.

The master plan is about one year off from its original 2011 target.

“It’ll take up until 2012,” says Mulvena. “We still feel we can build the four major projects with the $15 million voters gave us. There is just a good bit of work ahead of us.”

pmarcelo@projo.com