Coppell Chronicle Vol. 5, No. 38
Veterans Plaza to Debut on Veterans Day • Cozby Library Will be Closed for Weeks • City Plans to Reconstruct Royal Lane • Irving Voters Will Decide DART's Fate
We’re going to change things up this week by not mentioning Town Center Elementary School — not counting the mention you just read. But this week’s first two articles are about major projects on land adjacent to that campus.
Veterans Plaza to Debut on Veterans Day
Although Samit Patel designed the Veterans Plaza that will be unveiled in Coppell this week, he temporarily questioned the scale of its signature elements.
The plaza will feature six towers representing the six branches of the U.S. military: the Army, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force, the Space Force, and the Coast Guard. Each tower is 13 feet tall, and Patel said some colleagues told him that might be too big. The Coppell resident admitted he had doubts about his designs as he observed the construction process, but those thoughts dissipated once the towers arrived in the space formerly known as Town Center Plaza.
“As soon as the first one got out there, I was like, ‘Oh. No, this is just right,’” Patel said with a smile.
The process of setting the towers in place concluded at 8:05 a.m. yesterday. I know the precise time thanks to this video that FM Constructors posted on Facebook. The firm’s previous post features footage that was shot after sunset, accompanied by this caption: “Sometimes you have to work late when the deadline is nonnegotiable.”
The deadline is nonnegotiable because the Veterans Plaza is scheduled to be unveiled at 6 p.m. on Nov. 11, which is Veterans Day. The ceremony was planned as an evening affair to showcase the six towers’ lighted elements, as well as the lights included in the 10-foot-tall wall at the plaza’s south end. Tuesday’s after-dark festivities will also include a drone show.
This project was sparked by a suggestion from John Jun, a U.S. Navy veteran who was a member of the City Council from January of 2021 until May of 2024. It was also Jun’s idea to change the name of Town Center Boulevard to Veterans Way; the council made that official last month.
In the beginning of 2023, the city convened a focus group that included these veterans: Ron Forest, Mike Holder, Michelle LaFountain, Bob Ludwig, Don Munson, and Mark Smits. That group recommended not listing specific veterans’ names in the plaza for a few reasons, including the costs and complications of updating such lists as well as the relatively high rate of suicides by former service members. A majority of the focus group also said the plaza behind Town Center would be a more appropriate location for honoring veterans and the military than Andrew Brown Park East, a topic extensively covered in my previous articles on this project.
(Smits will be the keynote speaker during Tuesday’s unveiling ceremony. Coincidentally, he and Munson and two other Coppell residents, Larry Kellogg and Ronald Moore, each received a Congressional Veteran Commendation from U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne on Friday.)
The final price tag for the Veterans Plaza will be at least $2.4 million, and those dollars came from the Coppell Recreation Development Corporation, which is funded by sales taxes. Last March, the council approved a $715,000 contract with Fast General Contracting for the majority of the work and a $1.4 million contract with FM Constructors to build the towers.
In 2023, the council signed off a $186,761 design contract with Olsson Studio, which was Patel’s employer at that time, but Olsson eliminated its local landscape architecture division soon thereafter. Following a meeting with a new Olsson contact based in another state, Director of Community Experiences Jessica Carpenter told the council her staff was not confident that the project would receive “the same level of attention to detail, local support, and engagement.” So in 2024, the council approved a $67,600 contract with Patel to continue his work as a solo artist.
“Samit has been passionately engaged with this project since we began focus groups back in 2023,” Carpenter told me via email last week. “He has been there every step of the way, through multiple public meetings, through the design process, and into the construction phase. With Samit’s creative and thoughtful design, combined with the Park Board and City Council’s vision and support, the Coppell community now has a space that beautifully honors the service and sacrifice of our veterans.”
Cozby Library Will be Closed for Weeks
If you can make it to the Friends of the Coppell Library Book Sale before it ends at 4 p.m. today, you should stock up on a good read or two. The library itself will be checked out for a while.
Beginning on Nov. 10, the Cozby Library and Community Commons will be closed for at least two weeks so its roof can be replaced. That process involves the application of a hot tar surface, “which produces a very strong and unpleasant odor, creating an undesirable environment for library visitors,” according to posts on the library’s Facebook page.