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GREENSBORO — On a recent Friday, Glenn Dobrogosz filled a plastic bowl with fruit and monkey biscuits and headed for the gibbon enclosure.

A small crowd of cooing children gathered around as the Natural Science Center director tossed a small plum on the grass outside the apes’ pen.

Inches from the humans, Leslie, the furry female of the center’s mating pair, stretched her long, thin fingers through the chimpanzee-grade fencing and plucked the fruit from the blades of grass.

She might have a baby on the way, Dobrogosz said.

“Where else in Greensboro can you do this?” he asked, looking around at the crowd. “The voters have to decide, is this kind of experience worth it?”

In November, Greensboro voters will be asked to approve a $20 million bond to improve and expand the Natural Science Center.

The nonprofit center — which is partially funded by about $850,000 a year from the city budget — would use the bond money to double its zoo area, create a new aquarium, upgrade its theater, renovate older exhibit spaces and add a restaurant.

Supporters say the cost to taxpayers — an estimated $800,000 a year in debt payments — would be offset by increasing tourism dollars spent in the city and in a better experience for visitors.

If all the money was spent all at once, it could cost a Greensboro homeowner with a $200,000 home an extra $11.68 on his annual property tax bill, according to supporters’ estimates.

“This is truly a public-private partnership that works,” said Marc Isaacson, a member of the center’s board of trustees.

Greensboro voters have twice approved bonds to fund changes at the Natural Science Center — $3 million in the 1980s and $3.5 million in 2000.

The latter funded, in part, the creation of the Animal Discovery exhibit. Since it opened with its tigers, wallabies, a variety of apes and monkeys and meerkats, attendance has doubled.

A new, 26,000-square-foot aquarium and science museum adjacent to Lawndale Avenue would become a new entrance to the complex. Visitors would get to touch stingrays and learn about weather and the water cycle.

Bond money, matched with some private donations, also would help the center expand the Animal Discovery area to include new animals like the red panda, bald eagles, bears and small wild cats.

“As big as Animal Discovery is now, we have twice as much area to build,” Dobrogosz said.

A dry creek bed on the property would be turned into a boardwalk and bog garden leading to a pond and a new aviary.

An old petting zoo that dates to the 1980s would become space for new exhibits, such as the Sky Life project, comparing animal flight and human flight.

The influx of bond money and about $600,000 in private donations would also update exhibits in the older portions of the museum.

The dinosaur exhibit would get a renovation. The current entrance to the center would be turned into a restaurant that can be operated outside of the Science Center’s visitor hours.

The OmniSphere theater would be outfitted with a new Super Media Globe System by Konica Minolta. It would be the first of its kind in the country.

“It’s a leap ahead in a lot of a different ways for the options that are available for presentations,” Isaacson said.

All the upgrades would be built over seven to 10 years. They would accompany a $2 increase in the price of admission.

Supporters say the center is a good investment for the community. Dobrogosz boasts of his frugality in running the center and his ability to bring projects such as the Davis Kelly Fountain and the otter exhibit in under contractor’s estimates.

The Natural Science Center has an $11.5 million impact on the community, according to Andrew Brod, from UNCG’s Center for Business and Economic Research. With the recommended improvements, the impact would grow to $19 million.

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com