The Master Plan and the New Front Door

Plan 2016; entry groundbreaking 12 September 2018; opened with the 2020 season

Lead: Two years into the society's management, the zoo published the document that has governed it since: a master plan released in 2016, drawn with GLMV Architecture of Wichita and Zoo Advisors, priced at thirty-seven million dollars — the zoo's own magazine called it a "10+ year, $37–$40 million Master Plan" — and calling for new North American, Asian, and African exhibits, an education center, a restaurant, and play areas across the twenty-three acres. An economic-impact study published with the plan (Market & Feasibility Advisors, June 2016) projected a cumulative ten-year impact of $343 million and 652 jobs, and the zoo set its attendance ambition at 350,000 visitors a year — a number it would reach and pass in 2023. The plan's first phase was the front door. The new entry plaza, 3,690 square feet, was estimated at about three million dollars, aided by a $450,000 Indiana Economic Development Corporation Regional Cities Initiative grant; ground was broken on 12 September 2018, with Mayor Pete Buttigieg and IEDC President Elaine Bedel joining the society's executives. The entry was designed for how a zoo actually receives its city: the zoo's magazine noted in the spring of 2018 that Phase I included "a separate entrance for field trips and group visits" — the school buses given their own door, a design decision whose meaning the school-life entry below takes up. The new entrance opened with the 2020 season — a season the pandemic then delayed until 14 June 2020, as the zoo's own attendance note records — and the old zoo of fences and a deer that Erskine gave had its modern face.

Sources:

1. Potawatomi Zoo master plan, 2016 (GLMV Architecture; Zoo Advisors; $37 million; the exhibit program).
2. Market & Feasibility Advisors, economic impact study, June 2016 (projected $343 million cumulative ten-year impact; 652 jobs).
3. Indiana Economic Development Corporation, release on the entry groundbreaking, 12 September 2018 (the $450,000 Regional Cities grant; Buttigieg and Bedel present).
4. Potawatomi Zoo, Uproar, spring 2018 (the "10+ year, $37–$40 million Master Plan"; the separate field-trip entrance).
5. Potawatomi Zoo, published attendance note (the 2020 season opened 14 June 2020).