ASHEBORO, N.C. -- The North Carolina Zoo’s Africa Pavilion opened in 1984. Later this month it will be demolished.

On Wednesday, current and former employees gathered to take a final tour, open a time capsule buried over three decades ago, and share memories.

“The best memories were not only of the animals in the collection but were the people that we worked with. We had a good group of folks. Couldn’t have found any better anywhere in the nation, in my opinion,” former employee William Parker said.

The Pavilion has been closed to the public since 2015, but at one point, held 22 habitats.

Parker says he hopes whatever replaces the structure will be even better but says some things can’t be topped.

“I don’t know that we’ll ever recapture some of those attendance figures that we had back when the gorilla was born here. We had people that were lined up from the gorilla exhibit out to the top of the building.”