The Oregon Zoo has bought the property across the street. It is 3.4 acres, it sits next to the zoo’s Washington Park campus, and for most of the last half century it held one museum or another: OMSI for more than 30 years, then the Portland Children’s Museum for 20. It has been empty since 2021, and the zoo now owns it.
The number that makes 3.4 acres worth a news story is a different one. The Oregon Zoo’s main campus stretches across 64 acres, and only around 43 of those are usable, because the rest is ruled out by geology and by environmental constraints. A zoo working inside 43 acres has been making every decision against that ceiling since 1959, which is how long it has been at this location.
What goes there?
Nothing yet, and the zoo is careful about saying so. Director Heidi Rahn said the zoo will begin evaluating how the site might support conservation, education, animal well-being and guest experiences, and that specific plans have yet to be established.
One possibility she did name is the least glamorous and probably the most consequential. Some of the zoo’s administrative functions and support services could move across the street. Offices, in other words, and the back-of-house work that has to happen somewhere. Every square foot of that which leaves the main campus is a square foot that comes back as usable space inside the fence, and on a campus with roughly 21 acres it cannot build on, that arithmetic is the whole point.
“Over the past 65 years, we’ve learned so much about what it means to run a modern zoo,” Rahn said. “We’ve created better and larger habitats for animals, and greatly improved our facilities. But we’ve been constrained by our physical limitations. This gives us a chance to dream a little bigger.”
The building is coming down
Whatever the site becomes, it will not be the museum building. The structure has significant structural issues and was already marked for demolition under the City of Portland’s 2018 Washington Park master plan, so the demolition is not a decision the zoo is making now. It is an inheritance.
Anyone who has driven past lately knows what the place looks like: windows boarded over, play areas closed off, plantings gone to seed. Five years of vacancy on a site that two generations of Portland children walked into on a field trip.
Where this fits in the campus plan
The zoo is in the early stages of implementing a new campus plan, and this is the second piece of construction news out of Washington Park this autumn. In September we covered the first two buildings the zoo’s voter-approved bond is actually paying for, which is the on-campus half of the same problem: how to build better habitat on ground that is already full.
The off-campus half just got easier. Rahn called the acquisition an exciting moment for the zoo and for the community, and tied it to what the site used to be: “The Children’s Museum and OMSI have inspired curiosity and sparked imagination for so many kids growing up in the region. We want to continue that legacy.”
There is no rendering to look at and no groundbreaking date, and it would be a mistake to pretend otherwise. What there is, for the first time in 65 years, is room.
Source: Oregon Zoo, “Zoo acquires former Children’s Museum property,” November 5, 2026.
Quick answers
- What did the Oregon Zoo buy?
A 3.4-acre property next to its Washington Park campus, which housed the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry for more than 30 years and then the Portland Children's Museum for 20. It has been unoccupied since 2021.
- What will the Oregon Zoo build there?
Nothing has been decided. Director Heidi Rahn said the zoo will evaluate how the site might support conservation, education, animal well-being and guest experiences, and that specific plans have yet to be established. One possibility she named is moving some administrative functions and support services off the main campus.
- Why does 3.4 acres matter to a 64-acre zoo?
Because only around 43 of those 64 acres are usable. Geologic and environmental considerations rule out the rest, so the zoo has been designing against a hard ceiling since it moved to Washington Park in 1959.
- Is the old museum building being kept?
No. It has significant structural issues and was already marked for demolition under the City of Portland's 2018 Washington Park master plan.
- How long has the Oregon Zoo been in Washington Park?
Since 1959.
