Coppell staff present updated Community Experiences master plan, adoption scheduled for May 13

City staff and a consultant on Tuesday presented a draft update to Coppell’s Community Experiences master plan and told the City Council the document will return to council for possible adoption at the May 13 meeting.

The draft plan, led by Lauren Rodriguez, manager at The CORE and project coordinator for the master plan, summarizes a year-long inventory and needs assessment and recommends a five- to ten-year action plan. “Our previous master plan was last updated in 2017,” Rodriguez said, noting the update included an inventory, demographic analysis, benchmarking and public outreach.

Nut graf: The draft provides a systemwide inventory, identifies coverage gaps and ranks capital and program priorities so parks staff and the Parks and Recreation Board can use the document to inform annual capital-priority lists and budget requests.

Rodriguez and consultant Grama Moulton of Dunaway described the outreach and analysis that shaped the recommendations. The team said the process included 17 pop-up events at local businesses, parks and facilities, a dedicated project website, a first-ever teen-specific survey and on-site park inventories using GIS and photography. The plan collects facility-level amenities and classifies parks by role (neighborhood, regional, special use) and includes a 10-minute-walk access analysis and benchmark comparisons to similar communities.

Moulton said the plan translates public input into prioritized program and capital recommendations, with examples of high-, medium- and low-priority projects mapped to specific parks and a budget-range estimate and potential funding sources attached to many projects. “We worked then with a draft master plan through the park board, reviewing that a few times and then now with this final draft master plan that you have, to review for the next meeting,” Moulton said.

Council members questioned specific elements of the survey results and next steps. Council member Matthew Hill asked for more detail about the health, wellness and fitness programming the survey favored; Rodriguez said the survey included follow-up questions on specific programming but that she did not have those detailed responses in hand and would pull the report and share it with the council. Rodriguez also noted that the Parks and Recreation Board reviewed and approved the draft earlier this month.

Council members asked how the planning work would be used in budgeting. Moulton and Rodriguez said the action plan is intended to inform the annual project priority list staff prepares for the Parks board and council, and that individual projects would be brought forward for budget consideration in the capital-improvement process.

Ending: The council was not asked to take formal action Tuesday. Staff and the consultant said they will return on May 13 with the final recommendation and adoption request. In the meantime, staff will provide council members with the more detailed survey results and cross-checks with the ad hoc council committee working on recreation and wellness programming.