Coordination of autonomous cooperative vehicles is an important challenge for future intelligent transportation systems. In particular, coordination to cross intersections captures the inherent and connected challenges among control and communication. While intersection coordination and vehicular wireless communication have both received extensive treatment in their respective communities, few works consider their interaction. We provide a communication system analysis for the specific problem of centralized intersection crossing coordination, leading to design guidelines for both uplink (whereby vehicles send intentions to the central controller) and downlink (where the controller prescribes vehicles of safe control actions).