The project, financed by Copeland's family, will include permanent covered performance stage Watch video
In a region known for its unique cuisine, it's no surprise perhaps that a statue will be erected in memory of Al Copeland, the man who brought peppery Popeyes fried chicken to the rest of the continent. At a news conference in the Joseph S. Yenni Building on Friday morning (May 24), Jefferson Parish Councilman Ben Zahn unveiled revised plans for a memorial dedicated to the late entrepreneur, to be built in Lafreniere Park in the next few months.
The $400,000 to $500,000 project will be paid for by Copeland's family and will include a 5,000-square-foot paved patio area, a 30-foot-wide iron archway supported by twin brick columns and a 7-foot-4-inch bronze statue of Copeland. The practical selling point of the project to the parish was the permanent, 40- by 50-foot covered performance stage that will be built by the Copeland family near the memorial. The stage means the people of Metairie no longer will have to rent temporary stages for Lafreniere concerts.
The circular colonnade surrounding the sculpture, seen in a preliminary drawing circulated in April, is gone. The new design, dubbed the Al Copeland Concert Gardens, is airier and meant to be more aesthetically harmonious with the dog park, the splash park and other Lafreniere amenities.
Copeland lived large. His career included soaring business triumphs and plummets. His passion for high-speed motorboats drove him to become a six-time world champion. His domestic life played out in the newspapers as if he were a movie star. He famously feuded with novelist Anne Rice over the use of St. Charles Avenue real estate. Even his Christmas decorations drew crowds. And when he died in 2008, his funeral was a spectacle befitting his bigger-than-life existence.
Those who remember Copeland's role in Crescent City culture fondly will be pleased to know that the hands of the square-shouldered statue in the drawings revealed Friday still hold a box of the world-renowned fried chicken that made him famous. Beneath his feet, speedboats still launch into flight. From the beginning, of course, the project has drawn its share of detractors, who still may not be pleased with the depiction.
Copeland's son, Al Jr., who spoke at the press conference, said his family's relationship with Lafreniere Park began when they donated his dad's $250,000 Christmas light display to the public. Their rationale for proposing the memorial was two-fold. The statue and brick promenade would serve as a tribute to one of the region's bygone business and sporting champions. It also would focus attention on the fight against cancer, the disease that claimed Al Sr.
Al Jr. said that before his death five years ago, his father issued a last request over Thanksgiving dinner: that his children do what they could to find a cure for cancer. Since then, Al Jr. said, the Al Copeland Foundation has raised $700,000 toward the cause. Personalized paving bricks will be sold to benefit cancer research at the LSU Health Sciences Center and installed in the memorial plaza.
"I think this is how my father would like to be remembered," Al Jr. said.
The overall project, Copeland said, will be designed by Greg Cantrell, the landscaper known for designing the installation of modern sculpture along Veterans Memorial Boulevard. The exact design of the Copeland statue is still in the works. Al Jr. said that Blaine Kern Carnival designers were consulting on the concept.