BATON ROUGE - Two firms have submitted proposals for a revamp of the Baton Rouge Zoo.

Thursday was the deadline for designers to submit their ideas for a comprehensive master plan for the BREC zoo. The commission says the firms who submitted plans are PGAV Designations and Torre Design Consortium.

BREC says the next step is for each of the proposals to be reviewed and scored by separate review committees. Both committees will score each proposal based on the criteria included in the official request for proposals: the project team’s ability to accomplish the work, the project team’s organization and experience, the project approach and proposal content, the fee proposal and schedule.

BREC also announced it has fielded eight proposals for a rework of the Greenwood Community Park as well.

The committees will narrow down the candidates for the Greenwood project to a short list and conduct interviews of the top firms. Each committee will make a recommendation to the BREC Commission to consider at its August meeting.

Once the firms are selected and contracts are executed and signed, they will begin the process of evaluating the sites to determine what is feasible at each location and meet with business leaders, professional organizations, partners, public officials and members of the public to give input into the design of the master plans.

Those master plans will be presented to the public for input and to the BREC Commission for approval in 2019.