Bays Mountain breaks ground on otter habitat

KINGSPORT — Bays Mountain Park has been utterly otter-less since 2019 — but not for much longer. Wednesday afternoon, park and city leadership broke ground on a new otter habitat. It represented years of planning, fundraising, designing and gathering public input. Three years ago, Park Manager Megan Krager said at the groundbreaking, the park surveyed the community about what it wanted at Bays Mountain. Most responders said the animal habitats were the most important park feature to them — and over half said they wanted to see otters. River otters made their first debut at Bays Mountain in 1987. The park's last otter, Otto, came to Bays Mountain in 2017 at 9 months old. He was displaced from the wild by a flood and unable to be released. The day Otto died, said Alderman Colette George, was a heartbreaking day in Kingsport. Before the park could get another otter, it had to update its care to meet the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' modern standards. George, a member of the Bays Mountain park Commission, said the group had to consider factors like water filtration, the ratio of water to land space, the enrichment of the otters and more. They visited other otter exhibits — at the Baltimore Zoo, Smithsonian National Zoo, Knoxville Zoo, Grandfather Mountain and Western North Carolina Nature Center — to learn from them. The Bays Mountain habitat will have deep and shallow pools with beaches and marshland. It'll have room to house three otters. Guests will be able to watch the inhabitants from three angles: below, through a 48-inch tall viewing area underground; beside, along the shallow pool; and from above, on the nearby Nature Center's balcony. "The otters have been a favorite attraction to everyone who's come to Bays Mountain for years, ever since they were first introduced," Park Commission Chair Russ Brogden said. "I'm so pleased that they're coming home to a world-class facility." It's going to be the most expensive exhibit at the park, costing over $2.6 million. According to previous reporting, city staff estimated at a November 2025 Kingsport Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting that habitat would cost around $105,000 to run annually. Fundraising helped the city secure a $2.9 million grant from the state, which went to park improvements like the otter habitat. Eastman Chemical Co. led those community donations with a $500,000 contribution. Brogden said the park has transformed in the past 10 years thanks to the Kingsport government "[awakening] to what a tremendous asset we have here on Bays Mountain," investing over $6 million. That money took care of infrastructure needs, he said, and opened the door to partnerships that funded projects like the Nature Center renovation, the Fox Den Playground, a fox habitat and more. "Everything that Bays Mountain offers — we are the luckiest people in the world to have this," George said. "No other city has what we have." Construction on the otter habitat is set to start next week, with a possible end date in spring 2027. Watch a video of the groundbreaking on the Kingsport Times News' YouTube channel. See more photos online. Kingsport Times News staff reporter Allison Winters contributed reporting.