The Mustangs of Las Colinas that run wild in Williams Square in the City of Irving have their place among the world's best equestrian sculptures.
Mustangs of Las Colinas give Texas city of Irving an unmatched distinction in world equestrian art
By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place
IRVING, Texas — Development in the City of Irving has three marks of distinction, what is, what was, and what is to come, which by process of design and planning has evolved with need through time.
While construction cranes lift fabricated steelwork sections into place for the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas — what is to come — preparation for the implosion of Texas Stadium — what was — was taking place across town in the city. The Mustangs of Las Colinas, perhaps least known of the world’s great equestrian sculptures — what is — remains the centerpiece of a 12,000-acre master-planned community, that cattle rancher Ben H. Carpenter began developing out of his spread in 1972.
In its heyday, Texas Stadium, with its retractable roof, was state-of-the art and home to “America’s Team.” It became a constellation in the cosmos with its omniscient view. “Texas Stadium has a hole in its roof so God can watch His favorite team play,” former Cowboys linebacker D.D. Lewis is famous for having said. God was not alone in favoring the Cowboys.
“How ‘bout them Cowboys?” former coach Jimmy Johnson, soaked with Gatorade, used to shout after another victory, his hair fashionably held together.
Into American homes from Texas Stadium, via television, came Tom Landry, coach of coaches, inventor of the 4-3 and the “Flex Defense.”
Roger Staubach threw scoring strikes to wide receiver Butch Johnson and him performing the California Quake in the end zone—the team en route to another Super Bowls.
Every year, America’s Team played at night on Thanksgiving. Pat Summerall and John Madden were familiar voices. There, live on CBS, Madden served up “Turducken” and handed out drumsticks to players like Everson Walls who shutdown opposing receivers and played run containment with a force rated among the best cornerbacks.
For sure, this is abbreviated among all that can be recalled about Cowboys Stadium and great players like Ed, Tony, Emmitt, Troy, Nate, Michael, Deion and Russell, to name but a few. All those years of Texas Stadium, it was actually Irving from which it was said, “You are now looking live . . . .”
While Irving is oft juxtaposed as suburbia, that is a misnomer applied to this city west of Dallas. It is headquarters to four Fortune 500 companies and has this innate Texas-sized moxie to compete. There is a sense of place realized here, where the offering includes gondola rides up the Mandalay Canal.
Those who yearn for nostalgia, that is the sentimental, it’s tough stopping a tear from welling up, seeing on a sun-splashed afternoon how demolition workers have gutted Texas Stadium. What’s left are facades that will be imploded during a dubious, come-and-see gawkers’ funeral on Sunday, April 11, 2010. Up from the ashes, per se, the Phoenix Bird will bring with it a master-planned, mixed-use development of what is to come.
Cleveland, Ohio-based Forest City Enterprises will be the exclusive developer of this 373-acre site left in the wake of Texas Stadium and land the City of Irving owns across the highway. Previously announced was “residences, retail and entertainment space, a new civic center, hotel, cinema, two new Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) rail stations and a freeway-spanning SkyPark above Texas State Highway 114.”
Before all this comes to pass, the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas will be finished, complementing the galloping herd of Mustangs of Las Colinas.
Karla Prine, marketing and communications assistant for the Irving Convention and Visitors Bureau, was gracious with Texas hospitality in showing a guest around on short notice. Stops included The Mustangs of Las Colinas at Williams Square, next over to convention center construction site and to the memorial site of Texas Stadium in its waning days.
It was a last homage of sorts. Sadly, they can raze the stadium, but the memories can’t be demolished. Even so, the City of Irving is not a one-dimension place. It is well worth a return in the near future to see the results of solid planning.
Bob Berry, customer service manager for the Irving Convention and Visitors Bureau, knows meetings and events planning, knows Texas and knows specifics of construction, including soil survey. His father, while Berry was growing up in West Virginia, owned and operated a construction company.
James Sims, senior superintendent, displayed drawings of what was going on that day at the construction site, marveled at the rare opportunity to work supervising the building of such a unique design as the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas.
“Anybody who has been around for as long as I have, you enjoy doing this kind of building,” Sims said. “Anybody can build a box. This is structural steel. You can’t just put this together. If the steel is fabricated wrong, you are dead in the water.”
Sims points out one section, weighing 219,000 pounds, easily seen from the window of the trailer-office, that was recently lifted into place by a crane.
“It takes six weeks of planning,” he said, “and it takes 20 minutes with a crane to put it into place,” he said.
The 275,000-square-foot Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas has a stacked design with a superstructure that will be clad in 150 tons of perforated copper. Extensive consultation was done with the American Copper Council before going forward.
“The reason we decided on copper, although we did find it a little more expensive on the front end, but it requires no maintenance,” Berry said. “We designed this building as green as we can get it. We hope to be silver certified. It’s not the typical box. We decided to go vertical instead of horizontal.
“The copper will develop a patina like the mustangs,” he said. “There will be no signs. In the original planning, Ben Carpenter wanted a pollutant-free environment. The building will be a sign unto itself. The roof is designed to add photovoltaic cells down the road.”
The $133 million facility is the first phase of a mixed-use entertainment district at the intersection of State Highway 114 and Northwest Highway. Eventually DART light rail will deliver passengers from the convention center to Terminal A and vice-versa at the nearby Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
The four floors include 50,000-square-foot, column-free exhibit hall on the top level, meeting rooms with 1000 square feet, 20,000 total, junior ballroom and grand ballroom with 8000 and 20,000 square feet, respectively. There will be a covered terrace with 18,000 square feet. The kitchen is right behind the ballroom on the third floor.
“For us who have been doing this for awhile, this is a big concept, preparing the food closer to where it has to be served,” Berry said.
“Seventy to eighty percent of the convention business goes into facilities with 80,000 square feet or less. We went out and asked people, ‘What do you want in meeting facilities? We don’t want mega-rooms.’ They want to be the only one in the building at the time of their event. They will have our complete focus.”
The week of this interview an RFP for a hotel was issued. Returned bids will be for a hotel with four hundred to six hundred rooms. The second phase of development will also include a concert venue to hold up to six thousand, night clubs, as many as twelve themed restaurants and 7000 square feet of high-end retail space.
“We want it to be open to the community,” Berry said. “There will be a lot of activities to get the community involved in. Our whole mission is to bring more guests to Irving. This gives us an opportunity to bring to Texas more groups and national associations.
“When we get the rest finished, it will be a destination that will attract people from all over Texas and all over the country,” he said. “It will bring more money into the city.”
The Mustangs proclaim the work of Ben Carpenter’s vision for his family’s spread, “El Ranchito de Las Colinas, meaning the Little Ranch of the Hills.” Nine mustangs, life-size, running across moving water in Williams Square, are the centerpiece of Las Colinas, the 12,000-acre ranch that became an urban development.
The creative thinking, research, modeling and the sculpturing process of Robert Glen can be viewed in a documentary in the museum narrated by country artist Leanne Rimes. The bronze horses are not burnished yearly and the milky green patina is allowed to flourish. The tells the story of the lengthy process and the logistics of shipping models to London and flying the horses from London to space on the plaza that opened to the public on September 25, 1984.
The nine bronze mustangs form the largest equestrian sculpture in the world. Museum Guide Mary Higbie is there to answer all questions about Ben H. Carpenter, Robert Glen, the mustangs, and the bronze sculptures of wildlife and pastoral tribes in East Africa created by Glen that are for sale. Glen is a native Kenyan.
On certain days, amid the mustangs running across moving water, the plaza becomes filled with people as a site for public events, community events, really, including live music, some acoustic and other, plugged in with ramped up amplifiers.
It is Sunday morning, April 11, 2010 and ESPN cuts away from the studio for a live shot of the implosion of Texas Stadium. Public viewing was available in the Red Lot on a first-come, first-served basis. Webcams offered Internet users from all over the globe an opportunity to witness the final moments of Texas Stadium.
In an instant, the gutted remains collapsed in seconds amid a cloud of dust.
Museum Guide Mary Higbie shows a photo of the development stages the Mustangs went through before the finished product was delivered by sculptor Robert Glen,