The Giraffes: Four Males, a Barn, and Hadassah

Arrived late 2021; savannah opened spring 2022; first calf 13 October 2024

Lead: The master plan's signature work brought the zoo its tallest residents. Four male Masai giraffes — Seymour, Maximus, Wyatt, and Kellan — arrived late in 2021, transported in four separate trips from AZA zoos in Florida and Greenville, South Carolina, quarantined about four weeks, and shown first, as the Tribune reported the plan that September, at the zoo's Gift of Lights nights from 26 November 2021. Their permanent home was built new: the Laidig Giraffe Conservation Center, a barn of 10,389 square feet, with a two-and-a-half-acre outdoor habitat and waterfall, shared with zebras and ostriches, and the Phair Family Giraffe Pavilion, an elevated feeding platform that puts visitors at a giraffe's eye level. The outdoor savannah, laid out over the ground of the zoo's former Australian Outback exhibit, opened in the spring of 2022.

The project's cost is given two figures in the record, printed as they stand: the parks' own magazine called the Laidig center "a stunning new $2.6M facility," while the Tribune put the giraffe barn and exhibit together at about $4.6 million, "paid for almost entirely by donations" — the building's price in the one telling, the whole project's in the other, though neither source says so in terms. The giraffe story's second chapter began in November 2023, when a female, Zindzhi, arrived at the zoo already pregnant by a male at her previous AZA home. On 13 October 2024 she gave birth to a female calf — about 135 pounds and six feet tall at birth, and, as the zoo's magazine recorded at her first birthday, "the first Masai giraffe calf born at the Potawatomi Zoo." The calf was named Hadassah — the Hebrew name of Queen Esther, meaning "myrtle" — by friends of the zoo, the Depositar Auto Body family, and her birth was the crown of a year in which, by the zoo's own count, more than sixteen babies were born at the zoo, among them a greater kudu calf, Katavi, born 5 October 2024, the second kudu born there.

Sources:

1. Potawatomi Zoo releases, "Giraffes arrive," 16 December 2021; "Giraffe Calf Born," 22 October 2024; "Giraffe Calf Named," 15 November 2024 (the four males; Zindzhi's arrival in November 2023; Hadassah's birth, weight, and naming).
2. South Bend Tribune, 28 September 2021 (the expected delivery, quarantine, Gift of Lights debut; the $4.6 million barn-and-exhibit figure).
3. South Bend Venues Parks & Arts magazine, "A Tall Order," 31 March 2022 (the four transports from Florida and Greenville; the Laidig center as a "$2.6M facility").
4. Majority Builders, project record (the Laidig Giraffe Conservation Center, 10,389 square feet); Potawatomi Zoo, Fall 2025 Uproar (Hadassah the first Masai giraffe calf born at the zoo; the 2024 births).