The Norman Transcript
By Carol Cole


Construction on Norman’s fourth Legacy Trail plaza starts any day now, slated for Eufaula and Jones just south of the Depot.

And the plaza is planned to be unveiled on Statehood Day Nov. 16, as long as the “slow boat from China” arrives with a black slab of granite, due in mid-October.

Architect Bob Goins said the plaza design is completely done.

“I’m a little bit nervous about it. So I guess the operative word here is tentative,” he said. “There are so many components that have to come together that we are always a little leery. … That granite is out in the Pacific Ocean right now. We don’t know quite where. … If everybody delivers as they have promised, we’ll be just fine.”

The fourth plaza will honor Norman’s World War II years, with a bronze sculpture of a Stearman, being cast at the Crucible Foundry, planned to rest on the black slab of granite from China ordered through a vendor in Ada.

Norman was a training base for the “Yellow Peril” biplanes during WWII on the North Base at Max Westheimer Airport.

“It’s going to be a knockout,” Goins said. “I saw it the other day and it’s wonderful. Of course, it isn’t cast yet, but the model’s done.”

Park planner James Briggs said city, state and private money will finance the plaza.

Private donors are providing $75,000, with Gene McKown, Dick Reynolds and Dan Fioroni contributing most of that sum.

The city is providing $25,000. Another $10,000 is coming from a Oklahoma Arts Council matching grant, with the Centennial Commission contributing $38,000.

Alfred Downey of Downey Construction is the contractor. Architect Rick McKinney of McKinney Associates handled the architectural work.

Goins said the Legacy Trail committee has a conceptualization on the fifth plaza.

“But we don’t have a detailed plan. We probably won’t have that for a few weeks. We aren’t looking for that until sometime after Christmas,” he said.

The goal is to have all five plazas done by the state’s Centennial day a year from now.

A Legacy Trail extension has been discussed to go through University North Park and on to the planned Ruby Grant Community Park, east of Interstate-35.

Goins said it’s a good time to plan the extension.

“Because we’ve got some citizens that are very helpful and interested in trying to make this happen and we’ve got some development that we think will be cooperative on the private side,” he said. “And it all kind of fits in with our greenbelt plan.”

Goins also hopes a plaza celebrating the future of Norman would be built at a later date, maybe in front of a new city library in the discussion stages.