A few months ago, I made my first pilgrimage to St. Paul’s newest landmark, the Loon.
Completed in late September at the intersection of Snelling and University Avenues, the Loon marks the first new development in the large United Village project that surrounds Allianz Field. (So far, it’s the only new development in United Village—an early bird, if you will.) Designed by Scottish sculptor Andy Scott, it's huge, gleaming, and a bit strange.
The Loon appeared soon after I moved from St. Paul to Chicago, a city which coincidentally has its own metal sculpture that’s huge, gleaming, and a bit strange: the Bean. In 2006, the Bean was unveiled in the newly created Millennium Park, and today, it’s one of Chicago’s most iconic images, drawing millions of visitors to downtown Chicago each year.
The Loon has a few things in common with the Bean. The two sculptures are of a comparable scale; both are 33-feet tall, though the Loon, with its 88-foot wingspan, is about 20 feet wider than the Bean. Both are near attractions and transit connections in their respective cities, and they even share the distinction of having a self-important name that no one will use: The Loon is actually named The Calling, while the Bean is Cloud Gate. And both were revealed to great fanfare, although Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley outdid St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter slightly on this point, declaring May 15, 2006, to be "Cloud Gate Day.”
Of course, there are plenty of differences between the two pieces of public art, starting with the fact that St. Paul and Chicago are very different cities. But I think that the Bean can teach us a few things about the Loon. Perhaps it can even help us think about some of the promises and perils of Hamline-Midway’s future.
The Promise of the Loon
The Loon belies many failed development promises and unfulfilled plans surrounding Allianz Field, and it might look like a downgrade from the huge new development that was once planned for this corner. More broadly, as Bill Lindeke recently wrote for MinnPost, in the history of this intersection we can see the shortcomings and unreliabilities of urban development primarily driven by wealthier investors.
But it’s worth taking stock of some of the positives around the Loon.
For one, I think it’s actually quite beautiful (tastes may vary). Although a giant metal sculpture can seem superficial in comparison to grander plans for housing and other commercial development, there’s a reason to have great public art. Take the Bean: It’s a beloved sculpture that consistently draws a crowd and supports a vibrant urban space.
To be sure, a nice piece of public art isn’t sufficient to anchor real vibrancy on its own. But in tandem with a healthy variety of draws for different audiences—housing, multiple types of stores and restaurants, rotating events—public art and open space can serve as a strong center of gravity for people to congregate.
The Bean particularly exemplifies this. If you dropped the Bean in the middle of a parking lot, it probably wouldn’t add much to the surrounding public space. But given the concentration of parkland, transit access, and downtown amenities around the Bean, it has an incredible pull. Being around the Bean is fun, and not just for looking at the sculpture itself. The area feels alive, and this energy turns the area around the Bean into a place for people to hang out. The Loon holds similar promise as an anchoring public space in the more vibrant Midway of the future.
Another benefit of the Loon is a bit fuzzier: There is value to having iconic things in a city. Iconography provides one of the many small contributions necessary to support up a sense of civic pride among residents and project memorable images for outsiders. And although the Bean is only 20 years old, I love that it’s become an inseparable part of Chicago’s global image (even inspiring a knockoff version in the small Chinese city of Karamay).
A Long Way to Go
When you stand at the Loon today and look towards the abandoned CVS and empty parking lots, the area’s remaining challenges can feel substantial indeed. It’s difficult to place much stock in the Loon’s promise when the present seems so bleak. As much as landowner/developer/Minnesota United owner Bill McGuire has promised a better future, it hasn’t arrived yet. On any given day, the Loon hardly draws a crowd.
Yet here, too, the Bean may offer a lesson. While Chicago has always been bigger and denser than the Twin Cities, it has also had many cycles of decline and regeneration. Like St. Paul and Minneapolis, Chicago’s population dropped precipitously in the 1960s and 1970s, and much of the city has previously struggled (or continues to struggle) with disinvestment and a lack of vibrancy.
Millennium Park, home of the Bean, is only 25 years old, before which it was an empty railroad yard. Despite longstanding interest in turning the space into an urban park, redevelopment discussions went nowhere in the 1970s and 1980s, leaving a conspicuously underutilized swathe of train tracks in the middle of Chicago.
When city leaders started another effort to redevelop the area in the 1990s, they ultimately succeeded—but only after significant delays and cost overruns. Like United Village, Millennium Park earned a healthy share of negative headlines as plans stalled and the city was forced to allocate extra public funds.
Though these struggles are recent, most people who come to gawk at the Bean today probably know little about its history. Indeed, a first-time visitor to the park might be shocked to know that the park was a bunch of train tracks within this century. In a couple decades, might people feel the same way as they walk by the Loon en route to get a beer at the still-going-strong Black Hart?
Imagining a Better Future
Millennium Park, home of the Bean, welcomes about 25 million visitors each year. On the Saturday afternoon that I visited the Loon—now a tourist in my former city of residence—I saw no other admirers at the site, aside from three friends I’d dragged along with me. One of the bollards protecting the Loon from nearby vehicles had already been destroyed. As the Loon’s sole visitors, the watchful eye of a Metro Transit Police car in the nearby parking lot added to the uncanniness.
The Loon may never invite grinning selfies from millions of international tourists each year, and the out-of-town visitors that do come to the Twin Cities probably won’t have University and Snelling at the top of their visit agendas.
But the lessons to draw from Millennium Park and the Bean are not that the Twin Cities needs to chase global tourism. Chicago needn’t, and probably can’t, provide an exact model or step-by-step guide for revitalizing this segment of St. Paul. Instead, it can help us see the long-term promise of the Loon as one component of a broader revitalization, even when short-term prospects seem poor.
Though my touristic visit to the Loon was strange, I didn’t leave feeling hopeless. It wasn’t hard to imagine a warmer day, maybe coinciding with a soccer game or nearby street festival, in which the surrounding grassy area was filled with people hanging out or passing by.
As Minneapolis-based urban planner and blogger Alex Schieferdecker has written, great cities are more than just a collection of attractions. Struggling urban sites—whether downtowns, commercial corridors, or undeveloped masterplan sites—should focus on their base of residents who live nearby and will consistently partake in local activity. One-off events and attractions for further-away visitors are nice, but as Schieferdecker argues, if you make a city a place people want to live, visitors will follow.
In other words: the Loon alone won’t spur rejuvenation in the Midway, visually striking though it may be.
But just like neighborhood economic downturns can become self-reinforcing, virtuous cycles of neighborhood vibrancy can occur too. In recent years, underutilized industrial areas in Chicago have become some of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in the city (much like Minneapolis’s North Loop).
It’s possible to envision a far more positive future for the empty parking lots and vacant storefronts that currently surround the Loon. Change will take time, and there will probably be more disappointments along the way. But when that future arrives, it’s worth hoping that the neighborhood’s energy might help fulfill the Loon’s potential.
