SACRAMENTO—The Sacramento Zoo is getting its first onsite veterinary hospital, and zoo visitors will be able to watch as animals are treated.

The $2.5 million Dr. Murray E. Fowler Veterinary Hospital will house a laboratory, treatment rooms, an intensive-care unit and surgical areas.

Windows will let visitors watch as animals receive care.

A groundbreaking is set for Thursday, with completion by next fall.

“Preventive medicine has become a much larger piece of taking care of zoo animals than it has been historically,” said zoo Director Mary Healy. “We’ve been making do with a one-room clinic and a bathroom that we converted for X-ray processing, but we know we need to get more sophisticated with our animal care.”

The 5,000-square-foot hospital is needed to keep up the zoo’s accreditation with the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, Healy said.

The nonprofit Sacramento Zoological Society has raised more than $1 million and is borrowing to pay the rest of the construction costs.

The hospital will be named after the veterinarian who started the zoo’s animal medicine program in the 1960s.

“I remember the first baby elephants that we got were a gift to the governor,” recalled Fowler, now 77. Today the zoo has 140 species and attracts 500,000 visitors annually.