No One Has Ever Wanted Anything More Than This City Wants a RoboCop Statue

Stevens Point, a riverside city in central Wisconsin, is the home of the state’s Conservation Hall of Fame. It recently received a Bird City Wisconsin award for the 12th straight year, and next month, it will host the world’s largest trivia contest, one that fills 54 straight hours with questions and answers. What Stevens Point does not have is a gigantic statue of a fictional cyborg police officer—at least not yet. 

Stevens Point mayor Mike Wiza is trying to convince a group of Detroit artists to send their 11-foot-tall statue of RoboCop some 520 miles northwest, after the Michigan Science Center turned it down due to what it called the “unprecedented pressures” of the pandemic. “We’ve known for a long time that [RoboCop star] Peter Weller was from Stevens Point,” Wiza told VICE. “I graduated from high school with one of his cousins. When I saw that they don’t have a place to put the statue, I started reaching out, trying to get in touch with someone who was involved in the project to let them know that hey, if you don’t have a home for it, how about you bring it home, literally, to Peter Weller’s hometown. We’d love to have it.” 

Although Wiza has just spent a couple of weeks trying to rehome two tons of RoboCop-shaped bronze, this statue has been an oversized pain in the ass for more than a decade. And, like a lot of regrettable things that’ve happened in the past ten years, it started on social media. “Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky, and RoboCop would kick Rocky’s butt,” a now-deleted tweet sent to Detroit’s then-mayor Dave Bing read. “He’s a GREAT ambassador for Detroit.” 

Bing didn’t bite on the suggestion—the city admittedly had bigger problems—but two locals did. In February 2011, Brandon Walley and Jerry Paffendorf, both part of the now-defunct Imagination Station art collective, launched a Kickstarter campaign called “Detroit Needs A Statue of Robocop,” and six weeks, 2,718 backers, and $67,438 in donations later, the project was fully funded. “Well, here we go,” they wrote. “One crowdfunded RoboCop statue in Detroit coming right up.” 

It took ‘Team Robo’ almost 18 months to get permission to use RoboCop’s likeness, and to have a full-scale model of the statue made. That huge foam-wrapped form was then sent to Venus Bronze Works in Detroit, where master metalworker Giorgio Gikas would cast and create the finished piece. “It’s going on two and a half years, you know, I want to finish this fucking project, too,” Gikas told Daily Detroit in 2015. “It’s going to get done. And the City will be very happy that they have it, you know. And everyone who funded it will be very happy. And it will be out of my hair. And all the tourists will go and take pictures of RoboCop.”

The organizers then promised an “official installation and unveiling date” sometime in the spring of 2018, but those calendar pages came and went without RoboCop. Then, just last month, Walley told the Detroit Free Press that the statue was—for real—almost ready. “It's all assembled and put together,” he said. “This is just the last final detailing to make sure that everything is great and good to go.” (VICE reached out to Walley for comment, but did not receive a response.) 

In the early days of the process, the statue seemed destined for Wayne State University’s TechTown business park, just north of downtown Detroit. It was later announced that its permanent home would be at the Michigan Science Center, but those plans have also changed. “Working with Imagination Station in 2018, MiSci, a private non-profit museum that receives no city, state or federal operating funding, had planned to install the 11-foot-tall bronze sculpture adjacent to the Center in conjunction with improvements to our grounds,” a MiSci statement sent to VICE read. 

“But, given the pandemic's unprecedented pressures, MiSci’s resources must now be entirely focused on our core mission of serving Michigan’s students and families [...] As Michigan’s STEM hub, MiSci hopes to be able to support Imagination Station in the search for a new and appropriate home for this iconic work.”

Back in Wisconsin, Mayor Wiza is essentially waving both of his hands and shouting “OVER HERE, YOU GUYS!” He said that those involved with the statue told him that they’re “close” to a deal with another facility, before adding that close doesn’t mean done. “We’ve got an extensive park system, a river that runs through the city, and lots of opportunities to put a statue in one of our parks,” he said. “We’ve tossed around the idea of taking one of our parks and renaming it Peter Weller Park or Robo Park, or creating a new park just for the statue—but all of that is very preliminary, because we don’t even have a statue yet.” 

He’s already reached out to members of Weller’s family to see if they could ask if he even wants a park. “They did say that he’s kind of a private person, and he may not be quick to respond,” Wiza added. “I’m optimistic that he’ll at least chime in somehow.” (Through his representative, Weller, an actor–turned–Ph.D-holding art historian, declined comment to VICE.) 

Even if the OG-RoboCop statue doesn’t end up in Stevens Point, the city hasn’t ruled out DIY-ing one for themselves. “When the mayor first started sharing the news that he was trying to get the statue from Detroit, I reached out to him and said you know like, if we don't get it, let's just make one and see what happens,” Greg Wright, the executive director of arts advocacy organization CREATE Portage County said. 

CREATE has the capability to either 3D-print an oversized RoboCop, or to test out a couple of new technologies that turn discarded plastic into an eco-friendly artistic medium. “We’re working with our local university to try to see if we can create our own filament from recycled plastic,” Wright explained. “[The statue] will be a good motivation for us to figure it out. Then there’s another option where you can melt plastic bags into a kind of dough and then mold cast them. The end result turns out looking like marble.” (If they go with the last option, the biggest challenge could be collecting enough plastic bags; Wright estimates that it would take thousands of them.) 

Despite the challenges—and despite that other statue becoming its own RoboShitshow—both Wiza and Wright think that this would be a good thing for Stevens Point. “Creative placemaking and public art has a value, not just to visitors, but in building a stronger sense of pride for people who live in the community,” Wright said. “Making your community a destination drives up commercial activity and local pride, and it strengthens the workforce. There are all these benefits that come from something as simple as putting a RoboCop statue somewhere.” 

And for Wiza, his ongoing conversations about a 1987 sci-fi flick have been some of the most unifying in his almost six years as mayor. “This is the one thing that everybody on both sides of whatever fence, Democrat or Republican or whatever your political views, everybody has been all in favor of it,” he added. 

If the city does end up creating Peter Weller Park and assembling its own recycled plastic RoboCop in the center, Wiza just has one request. “Theirs is 11 feet tall,” he said, of that other statue. “I want ours to be 12. If we can’t be the first, we’re going to be the biggest.”