Andy Scott’s Steel Loon Repeats the Kelpies Regeneration Bet

Andy Scott’s stainless steel loon, The Calling, has stood 32.5 feet tall outside Allianz Field since October 17, 2024. The Glasgow-born sculptor, now based in Los Angeles, gave Minnesota’s state bird an 89-foot wingspan and set it at Snelling and University as the gate to United Village.

He has done this job before, from a 33-foot steel figure in Cumbernauld in 2010 to the 100-foot horse heads in Falkirk in 2014. St. Paul got the loon, and in 2026 the rest of the district was still being poured around it.

A 25-Ton Loon Holds Snelling and University

The bird is caught coming out of the water with its wings fully open, as if it had just called and was about to go. Scott wanted a pose with motion in it, not a stuffed specimen on a plinth. Stainless steel was the material because it lasts, takes light, and needs little upkeep in a Minnesota winter.

He and the Los Angeles shop Dyson & Womack spent over two years on the work. Scott later said it travelled in more than 60 sections on twelve 55-foot semi-trailers, a 2,000-mile road haul from the workshop to the Midway. Fabricator Chris Dyson, a Glasgow School of Art contemporary who also worked on the Kelpies, said crews then spent 10 days on the corner putting it together.

“Some people came daily; they brought deckchairs and watched the sculpture take shape,” Dyson said. “First the wings and then the head of the loon and then it was pretty clear what it was.”

THE CALLING BY THE NUMBERS

• Weight: 25 tons of welded stainless steel on a public corner.
• Feathers: About 50,000 individually cut and welded plates in a three-dimensional mosaic.
• Move: More than 60 sections on 12 long trailers from Los Angeles.
• Site days: 10 days of assembly at Snelling and University.

On the club’s grounds the finished bird rises to greet visitors to United Village, and the stadium now lists it as a stop in its own right, not only as match-day scenery. It sits in University Sculpture Plaza, at the entrance to University Park, on land that is part of the wider rebuild rather than the pitch itself.

How The Calling Compares With the Kelpies

Scott’s name travels because of the Kelpies, the pair of 100-foot horse heads in Falkirk that stand at the Helix, a park on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Each horse weighs 300 tonnes. The Helix opened on September 14, 2013; Scott’s site says the sculptures were unveiled in spring 2014. They were modelled on the Clydesdale horses that once pulled barges, and they were never only decoration. They were the picture that told you a leftover canal landscape had been turned into a destination.

THREE STEEL LANDMARKS, SAME ARTIST

Scottish Canals and Falkirk Council later published an EKOS study of the first decade. The horses and their park drew 7.3 million visitors, generated £81 million in economic value, and supported 110 new full-time jobs and £47 million in wages. About 32 percent of visitors came from outside the Falkirk area. The study tied the project to a 73 percent rise in the local tourism economy. Falkirk Council Leader Cecil Meiklejohn put the return on investment at almost 8:1.

John Paterson, chief executive of Scottish Canals, said art on that scale “requires real bravery to take forward, invest in and to deliver.” In April 2025 the council said the Helix had taken 1 million visits in 12 months and sat among Scotland’s top ten free attractions. The loon is smaller, and it does not have a 300-hectare park behind it. It does have the same assignment: be the thing people can name, photograph, and use as proof that a stalled district has a future.

Arria Went Up First in Cumbernauld

Before Falkirk, Scott had already run a cheaper version of the same idea at home. In 2010 Cumbernauld put up Arria, a 33-foot steel figure in Cumbernauld overlooking the M80, after the town had been branded one of the most dismal places to live in Scotland. The work cost £250,000. It was commissioned through the Cumbernauld Positive Image Project by Campsies Centre Cumbernauld Ltd, a company set up by North Lanarkshire Council to change how the new town was seen.

Scott built her in ten galvanized sections in his old Maryhill studio with colleague Graeme Gilmour. She was erected on August 24, 2010, and later opened by the Princess Royal. Locals still call her the Angel of the Nauld. The loops of her skirt nod to the Gaelic for Cumbernauld, the meeting of the streams. She is, in other words, a landmark ordered by a town that wanted a new postcard.

That is the through-line in Scott’s public work. Find the local symbol. Weld it larger than a building. Put it where traffic already goes. Let the rest of the plan catch up. Cumbernauld used a female figure beside a motorway. Falkirk used canal horses. Minnesota United’s owner used the state bird, which is also the club’s nickname, The Loons.

What the McGuire Foundation Put on the Corner

The William W. and Nadine M. McGuire Family Foundation commissioned the sculpture. Extra money for the plaza came from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, Snelling-Midway Redevelopment, LLC, and Saint Paul Parks and Recreation. Dr. Bill McGuire, the former UnitedHealth Group chief executive and Minnesota United’s managing partner, has said he wanted art that was public, easy to like, and part of the streets rather than locked in a gallery.

“Nothing speaks to the state of Minnesota like a loon,” McGuire said at the dedication, standing with Mayor Melvin Carter, Council President Mitra Jalali, and state legislators including Senators Sandy Pappas and Foung Hawj. He also talked about “a sense of pride and aspiration” and “the notion that we are always going to strive to be better.” The loon became the state bird in 1961. It is on the pitch as mascot and now on the corner as steel.

Scott was frank about how little he knew of the bird when the job arrived. “You’re going to think this is a bit daft, but the only thing I knew about the loon back then was that it had been sampled on various dance tracks I used to listen to back in the Sub Club in Glasgow in the early 90s,” he said. After looking into the animal and its hold on the state, he chose a slightly abstracted, Deco-leaning bird because, in his view, too much public art talks only to itself.

It does have some parallels with Falkirk in terms of that objective to regenerate and we’re proud to have been a part of that. It looks like it’s always been there, and always will be.

Andy Scott, sculptor

He hoped people in St. Paul would take ownership of it. In another interview he said he wanted the work, in time, to stand for the rebuild of that part of the city and for residents to be proud of it. The club later posted its own film of the build, with McGuire’s line that great cities have great art.

"All great cities have great art."

Comprising thousands of hand-cut steel plates, this colossal loon has a wingspan of nearly 90 feet and stands three stories tall; a feat not just of art, but engineering.

This is The Calling.

Go inside the monumental piece's journey to Saint… pic.twitter.com/Ohei4clJ7x

— Minnesota United FC (@MNUFC) October 23, 2024

Hotel Steel Rose Two Years After the Bird

Allianz Field, a 19,400-seat soccer ground, opened in 2019 on a former bus-barn superblock. The city’s file on the 34.4-acre Snelling-Midway redevelopment site shows the master plan dating to August 17, 2016, and a long wait after the stadium for anything else of scale. McGuire has said about 20 local families invested in the club and the ground. The real estate around it is a separate vehicle, Snelling-Midway Redevelopment, and the club itself is not the developer.

The first civic pieces arrived in 2024. PK’s Place, a 16,000-square-foot all-abilities playground named for the team mascot, opened on June 20. The Calling was dedicated on October 17. Only then did the vertical work McGuire had promised for years start to look like a district rather than a lawn and a bird.

THE CORNER BEFORE THE TOWERS

1. August 17, 2016: Saint Paul City Council approves the Snelling-Midway Master Plan.
2. 2019: Allianz Field opens for Minnesota United.
3. December 13, 2023: The HRA authorizes a tax increment financing district for Phase 1.
4. June 20, 2024: PK’s Place playground opens beside the stadium.
5. October 17, 2024: The Calling is unveiled at Snelling and University.
6. 2026: McGuire puts about $170 million into two restaurants, a four-level office, and a hotel, with Mortenson on the tools.
7. 2027: The 158-unit hotel is due, and the delayed Bailey Gardens planting is pushed to this year.

By February 2026 cranes were up in the Midway and the office frame, nicknamed the TreeHouse, had its steel. Along University Avenue the hotel went into the ground. In early September 2026 that job paused in a fight with the city over more than $300,000 in Green Infrastructure fees tied to stormwater. McGuire agreed to pay the fees into a reserved account so work could restart while the argument continued. Mike Hahm, an adviser to the development team, has spent years telling neighbors the delay after the stadium came from the pandemic and from the shock that followed the murder of George Floyd, not from a lack of intent.

Bailey Gardens, an acre of planting meant to sit between the office and the loon, with Bailey Nurseries as a partner on a project put at about $1 million, missed two seasons of permits. City officials have talked about 2027. In mid-September 2026 the Midway Diner and Picco Pizza and Gelateria were days from opening in pavilion buildings on the Great Lawn. Senator Pappas, at the loon’s own dedication, had already said the quiet part: the neighborhood could not let a sculpture be the only thing that happened there.

The Midway Argument Scott Has Heard Before

Scott has made about 90 public pieces. He knows the charge that a landmark is a substitute for housing, wages, or work for local artists. Fox Willis, an artist who had lived in the area for five years when the loon went up, called the sculpture underwhelming as art and worse as civic spending.

No offense to the artist- but if this sculpture was really to better the community – the commissioner would have found a local Midway artist to design it. He would have put money back into the community that he is claiming to make better.

Fox Willis, Midway artist

WHAT THE CORNER STILL HAS TO PROVE

• Local labour: The design and the steel work came from a Scottish artist and a Los Angeles shop, not from Midway studios.
• Housing and hunger: Neighbors who wanted shelters and food spending saw a 25-ton bird arrive years before apartments on the superblock.
• Pace: The stadium opened in 2019; the loon in 2024; the hotel is still a 2027 date.

Scott’s reply was the one he gives on most civic jobs. Public art will not please everyone. He aims for a wide audience and leaves the obscure work to other people. He said the first wave of reaction to The Calling was “overwhelmingly positive,” and that critics who wanted the city helped in other ways were still, in his hearing, treating the bird as a possible catalyst rather than the whole cure. Social issues, he said, are not the artist’s brief.

Resident Dan Wade, who backs both the club and the growing pile of commissions around it, described Midway as a place stuck between districts, where owners sat on land after 2019 and waited for values to rise. The loon does not unlock those lots. It does give the intersection a subject that is not a fence or a crane.

In winter the steel reads as clearly as it does on a Saturday match. Visiting supporters have already used it the way Denver uses the blue stallion by the airport: as the animal you stand under to prove you came. That is a smaller trick than Falkirk’s million visits, and St. Paul has not published a count. It is still the same bet Scott placed beside the M80 and the canal. Put the figure up first. See whether the town grows into it.

The 158-unit hotel is due in 2027. Until then the loon is the thing you can actually point to on the corner.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can You See The Calling Without a Soccer Ticket?

Yes. The sculpture stands on a public plaza at the southeast corner of Snelling and University avenues and can be viewed free of charge, with no Allianz Field ticket required. The plaza is billed as a public-private space tying the state’s arts fund to the developer and city parks.

Did the McGuire Foundation Disclose the Sculpture’s Price?

No. McGuire has not published a figure for The Calling itself. The family foundation paid for the artwork, and the surrounding plaza drew extra funds from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and Snelling-Midway Redevelopment, LLC, without a line-item cost for the bird.

Who Built the Steel Loon in Los Angeles?

Dyson & Womack, the Los Angeles fabrication company run by Chris Dyson and Emily Womack, both Glasgow School of Art alumni. Dyson trained in thermal engineering and had already helped Scott turn drawings into ship-scale steel on the Kelpies; he said scanning can show the size, but the plates still have to be made by hand.

How Does The Calling Compare With Minnesota’s Vergas Loon?

Vergas Park in Otter Tail County, south of Detroit Lakes, has a loon about 20 feet tall near Long Lake. The Calling is 12.5 feet taller than that bird, which is why speakers at the St. Paul dedication treated it as the tallest loon statue they knew of.