The breakdown
The new library and memorial would be off Byron Nelson Boulevard across the street from Rockenbaugh Elementary School, McCaskill said. The land where the library will be built, called the Parkwood site, already is city owned.
“We have our city library in the basement, basically, of town hall. They do a great job with the space they're provided, but parking is a challenge,” McCaskill said.
He said that for years there have been plans to move the library to its own freestanding location. The veterans memorial was already planned, with McCaskill making the announcement Nov. 10, 2024, that the city would be building a specialized memorial to honor U.S. military veterans.
The timeline
The original plan was to break ground on the veterans memorial was in 2025. With the addition of the library, McCaskill said the timeline for the library and memorial to open would be “a couple years” from now.
“We've sent it out for concept designs to see what it could look like,” McCaskill said. “We've been saving our money for a number of years, like other capital projects, but I think [it's] more than a year away from breaking ground, then another year and a half or two years after that before the door is open.”
The backstory
McCaskill said the idea to build a veterans memorial on the same site came after he had coffee with U.S. Army veteran Milan Georgia several years ago, who asked why the city didn’t have a location to commemorate veterans.
McCaskill said the city recruited veterans to the Veterans Memorial Committee to help design the park and that they wanted an educational component to complement the memorial since the elementary school is across the street.
