Drive past the corner of Swann Drive and Pioneer Drive this month and you'll see the same thing you saw in July: foundations poured, utility trenches open, a skeleton of cross-laminated timber panels waiting for glulam beams to tie them together. If you've been watching this site since the shovels went in during June 2025, you might be wondering why it still isn't done. The groundbreaking crowd was told fall 2026. The National Loon Center's own site now says spring 2027.
That looks like a delay. It isn't quite that simple, and the real story is more interesting than a missed deadline.
What changed between the shovel and the steel
At the June 20, 2025 groundbreaking, the plans on file described a 15,000-square-foot building. The current version on the Loon Center's site describes 20,000 square feet. That's a third more building than the one that got the ceremonial dirt flying with roughly 200 people watching, including former State Senator Carrie Ruud and Brainerd Lakes Chamber President Matt Kilian.
Somewhere between the ceremony and now, the project grew. The site itself may explain part of why. The original plan placed the building on federal land at the Cross Lake Recreation Area, under a 25-year lease finalized with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At some point after that, the Loon Center announced an enhancement to the site plan: acquiring nearby private land in addition to the federal parcel, so the campus could include on-site parking and a fuller natural setting rather than squeezing everything onto the original footprint.
Bigger site, bigger building, later date. That sequence tracks.
What's actually visible right now
The architecture firm behind the project, Widseth, posted a site update in July 2026 describing what's on the ground today: foundations in place, underground utilities going in, and the first cross-laminated timber panels arriving for assembly. CLT is the detail worth knowing if you're watching the build. It's a prefabricated engineered wood product, meaning large wall sections get manufactured off-site and then assembled quickly once they arrive, rather than framed board by board on location. Paired with exposed glulam beams, it's also why the finished building is expected to read warm and wood-heavy rather than institutional, closer in feel to the lodges around it than to a typical museum box.
Three levels are planned inside, each tied to a stage of a loon's life: one for flight, one for the water's surface, one for what happens beneath it.
The numbers side by side
| At groundbreaking (June 2025) | As stated now (2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Building size | 15,000 sq ft | 20,000 sq ft |
| Target opening | Fall 2026 | Spring 2027 |
| Site basis | 25-year federal lease, Cross Lake Recreation Area | Federal lease plus adjacent private land acquisition |
None of this means the project stalled. A construction schedule built around 15,000 square feet on one parcel doesn't transfer cleanly to 20,000 square feet on an expanded site. The timeline moved because the scope did.
Crosslake Mayor Jackson Purfeerst put the stakes in plainer terms at the groundbreaking, describing a project built on "strong values, pride in our town, respect for nature." Whether the building opens in nine months or fourteen probably matters less to most residents than whether it's the version the town actually wanted, and a bigger footprint on a larger, better-configured site suggests the fundraising and planning kept pace with ambition rather than falling short of it.
How to watch it without waiting for spring
You don't have to guess at progress from the road. A few ways residents are tracking this:
- The building progress page on the Loon Center's site posts updates as construction moves, described as watching "our future home come to life, frame by frame."
- The Nest, the Loon Center's temporary information hub in Crosslake Town Square, has been open since June 2021 and drew close to 4,000 visitors in its first year alone. It's still the place to ask questions in person while the permanent campus is under construction.
- Loons & Lakes Trivia nights continue through the fall, including a September 17 evening at UpNorth Social in Crosslake, with build-your-own charcuterie and old lead fishing tackle traded in for bonus points. American Legion Crosslake has hosted a parallel trivia series through the summer as well.
None of these require driving out to the site itself, though plenty of locals still do.
The next thing on the calendar
If the Loon Center's timeline has you tracking Crosslake's fall calendar more closely than usual, the next big date is already set. Crosslake Days Fall Festival runs September 24 through 26, 2026, with the Art & Craft Fair, the Chili Cook-off, the Lost Chili Pepper Hunt, a Cider & Candlelight Tour, the Knights of Columbus Corn-Hole Tournament at Crosslake Ace Hardware, and the Street Dance that closes it out. It's the kind of weekend where half the town ends up voting on chili and comparing notes on whatever's new at the Loon Center site down the road.
Between now and next spring, that's likely how most updates on the building will actually travel. Not through a press release, but through conversations at the Chili Cook-off, or over charcuterie at UpNorth Social, or standing in line at The Nest waiting to ask someone who works there what changed since the last time you checked.
The building isn't late. It's just bigger than the one everyone watched break ground.
Curious what else is shifting in Crosslake this season, from the shoreline to the town square? The team at Sandy Smith Lakeshore Real Estate Group keeps a close eye on the details that make this stretch of the lakes area what it is. Reach out anytime to talk about what's happening here, no matter what brought you to the conversation.
