Mounds View mermaid gets a makeover — and a little coverup of her bullet holes

NEW ULM, Minn. – The Mounds View mermaid had seen better days.

Over at least five decades, the 30-foot-tall statue has seen her paint fade in the sun and her fiberglass body crack in the freezing winters. She’s suffered a few battle scars over her 60 years, including three wounds from broadhead arrows and half a dozen bullet holes.

The half-woman/half-fish has needed a spa day for a while, which is why she arrived in New Ulm on Monday for a long-awaited restoration. Over the next few months, the plan is that she’ll be repaired, repainted and restored to her former glory.

“She’s going to come back looking better than she ever did,” Mounds View Mayor Zach Lindstrom said Wednesday.

Since his election in 2022, Lindstrom has made it his personal quest to restore the Mounds View Mermaid, which the city designated as a historical artifact on Dec. 9. The mermaid is so widely recognized that when the Mermaid Entertainment and Event Center took her down in 2018, citing safety concerns, thousands mourned in posts on Facebook and via petitions to bring her back.

Lindstrom said he looked into how to restore the mermaid, but one company recommended recasting the statute for $100,000 instead. Then, he said a chance encounter led him to Mike’s Painting & Sandblasting in New Ulm. The company had restored Blue Earth’s Jolly Green Giant statue, which involved repairing the fiberglass and patching up cracks in his boots and feet.

On Wednesday, Tim Koehler, a painter and sales manager at Mike’s Painting, sanded away parts of the statue that had been damaged. Koehler said he never expected that he’d be repairing jolly giants and mermaids when he first started painting 35 years ago.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be doing something like this,” Koehler said.

Koehler loaded up the mermaid and drove her with a police escort from Mounds View to New Ulm. He said the sight of the 30-foot-tall woman on the road made quite a splash with other drivers that day.

He said he hopes to be finished within the next two months. He hopes his company can find the exact shade of paint used when the mermaid was brand new. “The main goal is to try to make it look as original as possible,” Koehler said.

The makeover might include a little more than just a fresh coat of paint. There’s talk in town about giving the mostly topless mermaid a bit more ... coverage, Lindstrom said. This could mean more hair for the half-woman.

The project is expected to cost between $25,000 and $35,000. Lindstrom said the plan is to launch a “Save the Mermaid” campaign to raise money for the statue’s restoration, with the city pitching in.

In 2024, the statue was purchased for $1 from a representative of Triple Shift Entertainment, which owns the Mermaid center. Mounds View City Administrator Nyle Zikmund said the city hopes to make an agreement that will ensure the mermaid stays in the city even if any current or future owners leave.

Lindstrom said he hopes tourists in the future will come and see the mermaid, post-glowup. “She’s the thing that defines the city, and we’ve been without our signature identity for seven years now,” he said.