Coppell Chronicle Vol. 3, No. 40
Jun to Run for Open Seat in Texas House • CHS Cheerleaders Perform in Macy’s Parade • Trustees Get Sneak Peek at Bond Projects • Plans Call for Overhead Transit of Chemicals
They say “Cowboy fight never dies,” and that was certainly true on Saturday afternoon at the venue formerly known as The Ballpark in Arlington. Coppell was throwing at the end zone as time expired (after recovering an onside kick), but the Cowboys lost to Byron Nelson in the regional semifinals, 52-45. That was the varsity football team’s first loss in an outstanding season.
You can read more about that thrilling game here or here. But let’s formally start this week’s edition with a bit of news that you won’t find anywhere else.
Jun to Run for Open Seat in Texas House
Coppell Mayor Pro Tem John Jun will give up his seat on the City Council to make a run at the Texas House. He plans to file the paperwork this week.
Jun said he sees a term in the Legislature as the next step in his record of community service, which includes time on the Board of Adjustment and a stint as one of the city’s special counsels before he got elected in 2020.
“I’m actually running with that same mentality that if I do get the opportunity to serve the community, it would just be the next level, in a sense,” he said, “but still represent the community for their issues and concerns.”
Jun couldn’t pass up the chance to fill a vacancy in District 115, which includes most of Coppell, all of Addison, and parts of Carrollton, Dallas, Farmers Branch, and Irving. State Rep. Julie Johnson, a Democrat from Farmers Branch, is giving up the seat after three terms because she’s making a run for Congress. She hopes to succeed U.S. Rep. Collin Allred, a Democrat from Dallas who’s campaigning for the U.S. Senate.
Although local offices are nonpartisan, anyone who has paid attention to Jun’s council tenure will not be surprised to learn that he’s a Republican. Jun and one-time rival Biju Mathew are the biggest budget hawks among the current council members. In 2021, they cast the only votes against the city’s proposed tax rate. And Jun made waves earlier that year when he abstained from voting on a proclamation recognizing Pride Month.
Although he’s had some tense discussions with his fellow council members, Jun has proven to be a man of the people as a constant campaigner. Last March, when his bid for a second council term was unchallenged, he distributed lollipops to kids attending the city’s outdoor screening of Ratatouille. A month later, he handed out teddy bears sporting City of Coppell shirts to Special Olympians at their year-end banquet.
This would be an interesting time for a Coppell resident to be our area’s representative in Austin. Coppell is one of a handful of cities that filed an unresolved lawsuit in 2021 to prevent Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar from changing how sales tax revenues for online transactions are distributed. The long-delayed trial is scheduled to begin next May. Meanwhile, Coppell ISD and several other school districts sued the Texas Education Agency this year over changes to the state’s accountability system.
“There are a number of things that the city becomes concerned about that happen at the state level, so I’m hoping I can maybe bring that perspective with a council background,” Jun said.
The candidate and his wife, Judy Jun, have lived in Coppell since 1999. They have four children, ranging in age from 25 to 17. Their youngest is a senior at Coppell High School, following in the footsteps of his three siblings.
Jun’s first run for office happened in 2018, when Mathew bested him in a runoff. Two and a half years later, Jun got elected by defeating Jim Walker in a runoff following the pandemic-delayed election of 2020. Walker eventually won a seat on the council last May, when Jun and the council’s other two incumbents — Don Carroll and Mark Hill — were all unopposed.
Jun is the first Republican to declare a candidacy for the District 115 seat in the March 2024 primary. Two Democrats — Cassandra Hernandez of Farmers Branch and Kate Rumsey of Coppell — have both filed paperwork with the Secretary of State. A third Democrat, Scarlett Cornwallis, is also in the mix.
The last time the District 115 seat didn’t have an incumbent candidate was 2012, when Republican Jim Jackson of Carrollton retired after four terms. Before being elected to the Texas House in 2004, Jackson was a Dallas County commissioner for 30 years. (I repeat: 30 years!) He was succeeded by Bennett Ratliff, one of five Republicans who vied for the seat in the 2012 primary. Ratliff, who’d served three terms on the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees, went on to defeat Democrat Mary Clare Fabishak of Coppell in the general election.
Two years later, Ratliff lost the GOP primary to Matt Rinaldi by a hair, 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent. Rinaldi occupied the District 115 seat for two terms until he was ousted by Johnson; he’s since become the chairman of the Texas Republican Party.
Johnson’s margins of victory in her three general elections were virtually identical: 56.8 percent against Rinaldi in 2018, 56.9 percent against Karyn Brownlee in 2020, and 56.7 percent against Melisa Denis in 2022. Despite that recent stretch of Democratic dominance, I’ll give Jun a puncher’s chance in this election given his name recognition among Coppell voters, who have a propensity for flooding the polls.
I couldn’t find anything in Coppell’s Code of Ordinances or elsewhere that said Jun must give up his City Council seat while campaigning for the Legislature. However, his understanding is that his position will be added to the May 2024 ballot, when Mayor Wes Mays, Brianna Hinojosa-Smith, Kevin Nevels, and Mathew will all be up for re-election (assuming they all run again). Jun said he plans to serve until his successor can be sworn in.
Dec. 11 is the deadline to file a candidacy for the March 2024 primaries. The filing period for the May 2024 municipal elections will open on Jan. 17.
CHS Cheerleaders Perform in Macy’s Parade
Thanksgiving week was a whirlwind for a group of Coppell High School cheerleaders who made two appearances on national television broadcasts from New York City.
Nineteen Coppell students — including members of the school’s varsity, JV, and freshman squads — were among approximately 600 cheerleaders who performed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. A Dallas company called Spirit of America Productions invites cheerleaders from across the nation to audition for its annual entry. Head coach Lindsey Bates told me this was the first time Coppell High School cheerleaders participated.
On Thursday morning, the cheerleaders were preceded in the parade’s lineup by a clown troupe known as the Nutty Professor Einsteins & Wacky Graduates. The cheerleaders were followed by Miss America Grace Stanke, who was trailed by a giant balloon of the lead character from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series.
As an added bonus to their parade experience, Spirit of America choreographer Dahlston Delgado — who may be familiar to fans of Netflix’s Cheer series — picked the cheerleaders from Coppell and Flower Mound Marcus to perform on Monday’s episode of NBC’s Today show. Bates said the two squads rehearsed together before leaving for New York.
After the cheerleaders’ parade performance, Today host Savannah Guthrie said parents nationwide would be rewinding their DVRs and looking for familiar faces. I couldn’t find any archived NBC footage of their performance on Today or during the parade, but you can see them at the 17:30 mark of this YouTube video produced by USA Today.
Trustees Get Sneak Peek at Bond Projects
Coppell ISD trustees recently got their first look at the renovations planned for Valley Ranch Elementary School, and those designs got rave reviews.
“This is so exciting,” Trustee Leigh Walker said. “And I love the light!”
The light that excited Walker is evident in this rendering of Valley Ranch’s revamped library, which will include a classroom area with walls that teachers and students can write on.
“You’re going to see a lot more sunlight and opportunities for kids to feel a little more wide-open in that area,” Chief Operations Officer Chris Trotter told the trustees during their Nov. 13 meeting
That library rendering was one of several that Trotter shared. These others illustrate the planned changes to Valley Ranch’s main entrance, another corner of its library, and a hallway leading to a classroom.
Trotter said Valley Ranch’s students will be displaced to portables on a rotating basis as the school is reconstructed. When Trustee Nichole Bentley asked about security for those students, Trotter said the portables will be behind a gated fence, and the teachers will be able to lock their doors.
Valley Ranch’s makeover is one of the first projects financed by the $321.5 million bond package that Coppell ISD voters approved last May. Trotter also showed the trustees renderings of Coppell High School’s new Fine Arts Building and its revamped Tennis Center. The board will be asked to approve final specifications for all three projects next March, and they are projected to be completed by July of 2025.
You can watch Trotter’s presentation by skipping to the 54-minute mark of this video, and you can click here to see more renderings.
Plans Call for Overhead Transit of Chemicals
Anyone who’s used a bank’s drive-thru lanes can probably recall hearing their money being whisked overhead as it traveled to or from the teller. Now imagine that, instead of checks and cash, those tubes were carrying sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. If that scenario unnerves you, then you should avoid the AstraZeneca facility in Coppell.
As detailed in the August article called “Prescription Powder Produced Only in Coppell,” our city is the sole source of a drug called Lokelma that treats high levels of potassium. AstraZeneca manufactures it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on Wrangler Drive, not far from the Coppell High School Ninth Grade Campus. Lokelma is the only drug produced at that facility.
In September, the City Council approved zoning changes that allowed AstraZeneca to ramp up production by building an accessory “tank farm.” These tanks will contain sodium hydroxide (NaOH), zirconium acetate (ZrAc), colloidal silica, and hydrochloric acid (HCl), all of which are already being used in AstraZeneca’s main structure.
The approved plans called for the chemicals to travel between the main building and the tank farm via an underground pipe vault. However, the Coppell Planning and Zoning Commission recently considered a revised proposal to convey the chemicals via an overhead pipe rack, which would be easier to access when repairs were necessary.
“Our preference was to do the pipe rack from day one,” AstraZeneca engineer Jerry Doyle told the commissioners on Nov. 16. “That’s the industry standard. That’s a better design.”
However, the initial design for a pipe rack did not pass muster with AstraZeneca’s landlord, Doyle said. After the zoning changes were approved, he said, a “much-more aesthetically pleasing” design was created, as illustrated in this rendering.
“When they saw the new design, they were much more in favor,” Doyle said. “It actually brings the building together. It doesn’t look like two separate buildings anymore.”
Senior Planner Mary Paron-Boswell told the commissioners the pipe rack would be hard to see from Wrangler Drive, as it will be more than 500 feet from the road. She said the bottom of the pipe rack would be about 23 feet above the ground, which is about 10 feet higher than the top of an 18-wheeler. The rack would be built to withstand winds of up to 120 miles per hour, and its support beams would be surrounded by guardrails.
The commissioners recommended approval of the pipe rack, but the final decision will be made by the City Council on Dec. 12.
By the way, AstraZeneca’s landlord on Wrangler is a firm called ML Realty Partners. You may have noticed some big walls went up recently across Southwestern Boulevard from Pinkerton Elementary School. That’s where the firm is building three more warehouses so that its Park West Crossing development can span the entire south side of Southwestern, from Denton Tap Road to Freeport Parkway. The Planning and Zoning Commission approved those site plans in August of 2022.
In other news from the business beat …
• An eagle-eyed subscriber spotted some activity on Wednesday in the long-dormant space along Denton Tap that used to house Carmel Restaurant and Lounge. That same subscriber also noticed that, for a brief time, the “Now Open / Opening Soon” page on the city’s website indicated the new tenant would be Let’s Hibachi, but that listing was gone by the time I looked. I tried to contact the hibachi chain and the building’s leasing agent for more info, but neither got back to me before the long holiday weekend.
• Back in April, I reported that a lit sign for “Chulopan Bakery” had been installed at the MacArthur Boulevard space that used to be known as Kasa Kolache. The aforementioned page on the city’s website says Chulopan is now open, but the evidence I saw with my own eyes this morning says otherwise.
• About a block or so to the north, a restaurant called Paradise Biryani Pointe has taken over the suboptimal space behind the laundromat that used to be a Burger King. Earlier this year, Jaffa BBQ lasted only four months in that spot before the landlord posted a lockout notice.
• Speaking of lockout notices, one of those has been posted at Pick Up USA Fitness, a basketball-based business on the west end of Sandy Lake Road.
• It’s been a bad month for fitness facilities around here. Pure Barre clients were told last week that the studio on Denton Tap would be closing temporarily, “due to unforeseen circumstances.” According to Business Insider, those unforeseen circumstances are not unique to Coppell; they include paychecks that were miscalculated or just missing altogether.
Chronicle Crumbs
• Archer Western Herzog, the contractor building DART’s Silver Line, plans to trim trees along the train tracks due north of Pinkerton Elementary School this week. If you live in that area, click here for more details.
• On Nov. 14, Coppell Animal Services published a Facebook post that included this statement: “We have seen an increase in the number of animals being abandoned in Coppell.” When I asked for some stats to quantify that increase, I was told 32 strays — 17 of which were abandoned — were received between Oct. 1 and Nov. 15. In the same timespan last year, 13 strays were taken in, and three of those 13 were abandoned.
• I recently made a rare foray into the neighborhood directly south of Duck Pond Park to get a look at the property highlighted in the next item. That’s when I saw a house on Meadowcreek Road that features a set of yard signs that say “YOU MATTER,” “YOU GOT THIS,” “DON’T GIVE UP,” and “YOUR MISTAKES DO NOT DEFINE YOU.” I don’t know how these folks could have foreseen that I’d be driving by, but thanks for the encouraging words!
• The under-construction house at 551 Arbor Brook Lane has been in limbo for more than a year. On Dec. 7, the Coppell Building and Standards Commission — an alter ego of the city’s Board of Adjustment — will conduct a public hearing on the stalled project. The commissioners may order that the house be “repaired, vacated, removed, or demolished,” according to a notice posted in the front yard.
• The Lewisville ISD Board of Trustees has scheduled a public hearing for Dec. 4, when they’ll consider a petition to detach five homes from the district and annex them to Frisco ISD. Wait, what? That’s a thing you can do?
Are You Ready to Upgrade to Paid?
If this is the first time the Chronicle has landed in your inbox this month, then you’re among my 1,250 free subscribers. Here are a few topics explored in November articles that were for my 820 paid subscribers’ eyes only:
Coppell ISD’s student body is expected to shrink because the district may have reached its peak total enrollment.
A proposal to open an ice cream shop in Old Town Coppell could be derailed over the placement of a dumpster.
A developer plans to build a humongous waterpark resort in Grapevine, right outside Coppell’s city limits.
A sequel is in the works for Valley Ranch’s dormant multiplex.
The American kestrel may be designated as Coppell’s official bird.
If you become a paid subscriber for $5 per month or just $30 per year, you’ll be able to read those articles and all of the others in the Chronicle’s archive.
Community Calendar
Holidays at Heritage Park: The Coppell Historical Society invites the community to Heritage Park between 6 and 8:30 p.m. on Friday to enjoy Christmas carols and a Christmas tree lighting.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: Theatre Coppell will stage nine performances of this Christmas comedy at the Coppell Arts Center. The first show is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Friday.
Vintage Christmas: Santa and Mrs. Claus will pass out candy canes and pose for pictures between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturday at Heritage Park. During the same time frame, the Assistance League of Coppell will be set up near the Farmers Market pavilion to sell the latest ornament in their “Landmarks of Coppell” collection:
Caregiving Heroes: Making a plan for the rest of the holiday season will be the main topic at the monthly meeting of the Coppell support group for people assisting loved ones with aging or other concerns. The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Saturday in the library at First United Methodist Church.
Holiday Parade and Tree Lighting: Coppell’s annual lighted parade will begin at 6 p.m. on Saturday at Saint Ann Catholic Parish and end at Andrew Brown Park East, where a 65-foot tree will be lit.
Jingle & Mingle Variety Show: The Coppell High School Cowboy Theatre Company will present a variety show at 8 p.m. on Saturday. Be sure to get there by 7 o’clock for food and drinks, a cake auction, and a raffle.
HarpEssence Holiday Concert: A free show featuring four concert grand harps is scheduled for 3 p.m. on Dec. 3 at the Coppell Arts Center.
Holiday Hustle: The Coppell Cheerleading Association’s third annual fun run will begin at 8 a.m. on Dec. 9 at Andrew Brown Park East.
The Four C Notes: The Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons tribute group will present two Christmas shows at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Dec. 9 at the Coppell Arts Center.
Wreaths Across America: Coppell’s Rolling Oaks Memorial Center is among more than 4,100 cemeteries nationwide where volunteers will place remembrance wreaths on veterans’ graves. This year’s ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Dec. 16.
John Jun and Bennett Ratliff aren’t Coppell’s only locally elected officials to seek higher offices since the turn of the century. In 2012, City Council Member Brianna Hinojosa-Smith (whose last name was Hinojosa-Flores at the time) ran for Congress in District 6 as a Democrat. She finished second in a three-candidate primary won by Kenneth Sanders, who ended up getting crushed by Republican incumbent Joe Barton.
Meanwhile, an attorney general’s ruling from 1957 forced Tracy Fisher to give up her seat on the Coppell ISD board last year when she ran for the State Board of Education as a Democrat. Fisher lost to Republican Evelyn Brooks, who made news this month for suggesting that “creation” should be included in science textbooks.