The expansion eras, one by one — and a pattern corrected

ROW 9 · BOUNDARY-PRINTED · REBUILDS DISTINGUISHED FROM FIRST BUILDS

First, the correction: “Australian Adventure 1987” is not a Potawatomi era. Australian Adventure and African Journey are the Fort Wayne zoo's named realms, in that city's build. Potawatomi's Australian exhibit was the Australian Outback (also carried as the Australian Walk-a-Bout), a walk-through among emus, kangaroos and Bennett's wallabies, which ran until 2020 and was then cleared — its ground became the giraffe savannah, a succession, not a survival. Potawatomi's own eras, in order: the 1927 expansion to ten acres; the 1979 renovation (1.5 million dollars, a rebuild); the Zoo Farm, from 1988, in the 1949 barn's line; “Butterflies in Living Color,” first opened 2008; the Endangered Species Carousel, April 2016; then the 2016 master plan (GLMV Architecture and Zoo Advisors; a ten-plus-year, 37-to-40-million-dollar program) and its works one by one — the entry plaza (ground broken 12 September 2018; 3,690 square feet, about 3 million dollars with a 450,000-dollar Regional Cities grant; opened with the pandemic-delayed 2020 season; a new front door, not new ground); the giraffe savannah, spring 2022, the Laidig Giraffe Conservation Center (10,389 square feet) on the old Outback ground — priced 2.6 million dollars for the center in the parks magazine and about 4.6 million for barn and exhibit together in the Tribune, both standing; the Veldman Family Lion Habitat, opened 29 June 2023, a renovation of the emptied chimpanzee habitat (a little over 1.5 million dollars, inside the 6.2-million-dollar “Big & Loud” campaign); the Andean bear habitat joined to The Lodge (opened 28 March 2024, the bear in that June); and Big Cat Tracks (ground broken 14 August 2025; 5.5 million dollars; Amur leopards and tigers), the plan's final phase, in the zoo magazine's phrase its “first physical expansion in decades” — the modern era's one true ground-expansion — still under construction through 2026, a few hundred feet from the WPA house it succeeds. Zoo Luminate, the lantern production, debuted in 2025 and returned 22 April–28 June 2026.

Sources:

1. South Bend zoo file, articles “The Master Plan,” “The Giraffes,” “The Lions Return,” “Big Cat Tracks,” “The Zoo's Fixtures” — the 2016 plan; IEDC release, 12 September 2018; the zoo's Uproar magazines; Tribune coverage, 2025–2026.
2. The zoo's published exhibit record, November 2026 (Australian Outback to 2020); Fort Wayne Zoo's own record (Australian Adventure / African Journey are Fort Wayne's names, cited only to keep them out of this course).