The North Alabama Zoological Society says it has faced difficulty in garnering financial support, and the original site fell through with the developer they had been working with.

“We’ve had some ups and downs; it’s been a little bit difficult,” Executive Director Ethan Woodruff said on a Facebook live to update the public on the zoo’s plans.

While the pandemic was tough on fundraising, Woodruff says the current economic situation is tougher.

“Right when the pandemic was ending, you know, we hit the economy and inflation and so that’s actually made it a lot more tough in the last nine months or so, to a year,” Woodruff said.

One challenge the society has faced in the last year is the original site it had located fell through.

“I don’t want people to get discouraged. These things happen,” Woodruff said,

Some people believed the society had already finalized the purchase of the property, but it has not yet closed on a site for the zoo.

“We approached a developer that was buying a particular site south of Tanner,” Woodruff said. The society began working with a developer and the plan was to use the zoo as the anchor for the development, but the developer fell ill and was not able to complete the purchase.

The society is now in talks with other developers regarding being an anchor for their developments.

“We’re not cancelled,” he said. “We’re not putting all our eggs in one basket.”

The original site is still up for sale.

“Developers are still actively trying to purchase it, and many of those developers have expressed interest in having us as an anchor,” Woodruff said.

The society is looking at alternative sites in the same vicinity.

“One of the reasons why you don’t hear a lot about what we’re doing is because what we’re doing is kind of boring,” Woodroof said. “It’s just these big deals, they take time and there’s a lot of moving parts and different things that we’ve just got to be patient on.”