The Detroit Zoo's $49 Million New Trail Faces Huntington Woods

Walk the fence line along Rackham Golf Course this month and you will notice something the scorecards never mention. Past the far end of the course, where wayward drives used to vanish into brush, there is now a seven-acre habitat with alpacas, giant anteaters, and a stingray touch pool. The land belongs to the Detroit Zoo. The fence belongs to Huntington Woods.

For a town of roughly 6,250 residents, sharing a property line with an institution that houses more than 2,000 animals across upwards of 200 species is not a new arrangement. What changed this year is the size of what sits behind that fence, and how many evenings this fall the gates on the Huntington Woods side stay lit well past dark.

A Zoo That Never Picked a Side

The Detroit Zoo opened at its current site on August 1, 1928, which makes this a 98-year-old institution with a foot in two cities. Its ticketed entrance carries a Royal Oak address, and most visitors park, buy a ticket, and never think about where the property actually ends. But the boundary that matters to Huntington Woods runs along the golf course, not the front gate.

Rackham Golf Course itself carries a Huntington Woods address on 10 Mile Road, and it was laid out by Donald Ross, making it one of the older public courses in the state. That course has shared a back fence with zoo land for generations. What sat behind that fence for most of those decades was maintenance yard and overflow habitat. This year it became the zoo's newest and largest addition.

The Biggest Thing the Zoo Has Ever Built Faces the Quiet Side

The Fred and Barbara Erb Discovery Trails opened on May 23, 2026, a seven-acre complex that cost $49 million to build, funded in part by a $6 million gift from the Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation and a $3 million gift from Aaron and Carolynn Frankel. It is the largest capital project in the zoo's history at this site, and it landed on the boundary that faces Huntington Woods rather than the plaza most day visitors photograph.

The complex holds bush dogs, giant anteaters, prairie dogs, burrowing owls, southern stingrays, and brownbanded bamboo sharks, along with a working goat yard, alpacas, miniature donkeys, and chickens. Visitors can walk the elevated Canopy Trail, cross the accessible Treetop Crossing play structure, or stop at the Aaron and Carolynn Frankel Stingray Cove to touch a stingray. None of it required Huntington Woods to change a single ordinance or approve a single permit. It simply arrived on the other side of a fence residents already walked past.

The Four Weekends That Change Ten Mile Road

Zoo Boo returns for its usual run, but the 2026 version starts an hour earlier than in past years and stays open later into the evening. The dates:

• October 3 and 4
• October 9, 10, and 11
• October 16, 17, and 18
• October 23, 24, and 25

Gates open at 3 p.m. and the event runs until 8:30 p.m. Full zoo access lasts until 6 p.m., after which the eastern section, from the main gates to Table 28, becomes an illuminated Halloween walk through closing time. New this year are a light-up LED dance floor and a talking pumpkin, added to the returning trick-or-treat stations and character meet-and-greets. Tickets start at $21, members get 10 percent off, and parking runs $8 per vehicle unless you're a member, in which case it's free.

Eleven event days across four consecutive weekends means most of October carries zoo traffic beginning in mid-afternoon rather than after dinner, which is what longtime residents may be used to from previous years. That earlier start time is a small detail on a press release. On the ground, it means the stretch of road along the golf course and the zoo's back boundary sees cars an hour sooner on eleven of this month's weekend afternoons.

The Businesses That Were Already Doing This Work

None of this is new territory for Huntington Woods commerce. Monarch Market & Cafe, at 10099 W Eleven Mile Road, has been the neighborhood's coffee and gelato stop for years, run by owner Jeremy Wolfe with hours that close on Mondays and open early the rest of the week. It sits close enough to the zoo's back boundary that a coffee run before a Zoo Boo evening, or a gelato stop after one, has always made sense without anyone marketing it that way.

Thrifty's Huntington Woods Flower Shop, at 26989 Woodward, is a second-generation family business that delivers to Berkley School District schools including Burton Elementary and Norup International, arranges flowers for services at Huntington Woods Lutheran Church, and provides the floral work for donor recognition at the zoo itself. That last detail means the zoo's growth already runs through a Huntington Woods storefront, whether or not most visitors driving in from the Royal Oak side ever notice.

For residents who would rather skip the Ten Mile Road traffic during event hours, Reynolds Park offers walking trails and a small field a few streets over, a quieter route that keeps the zoo's fall calendar from being the only option for an evening outside.

None of this makes Huntington Woods a zoo suburb. It makes it a town where a $49 million construction project and a monthlong Halloween event both happened on the same fence line most residents have walked past for years without a second look. The zoo built its biggest addition facing the quiet side of town, and this October, that side gets busier eleven nights out of thirty one.

If you're weighing what it actually means to live this close to a piece of Metro Detroit's biggest attraction, on the quiet side of the fence rather than the ticketed one, K&K Real Estate Group knows Huntington Woods block by block. Let's Start a Conversation.