April The Giraffe's Zoo Home Turning into an Inn and Luxury Camping

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Excerpts:


Couple breathes new life into abandoned zoo

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Cathy, who grew up in East Durham, and her husband, Ben, purchased the 150-acre site in January 2012 — nearly six years after the animal park shut its doors. The couple saw potential for good opportunities, she said...

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One of the inn’s five rooms will be named the Giraffe Room, inspired by the Game Farm’s most famous resident — April the Giraffe — born there in 2002, Ballone said.

“By far, the biggest boost we were given was that April the Giraffe was born here,” Ballone said. April garnered global attention on social media as the world waited anxiously for the birth of her calf at an animal park near Binghamton last year....

I imagine we have to be one of the only abandoned zoos where we allow people to stay,” Ballone said. “It’s an interesting niche market to be in.”

The site will also offer glamping, or upscale camping, sites run by the company Tentrr. The sites consist of a woodstove, a grill, a picnic table and a canvas tent with a queen-sized bed on a pressure-treated platform, Ballone said. Tentrr markets camping to people who don’t have space to store tents and sleeping bags.

“It’s above sleeping on the ground in a tent,” she said

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