Coppell Chronicle Vol. 1, No. 2

I Hear the Train a Comin’ • Stay in Your Lane, Lewisville • Neighbors Concerned About Short-Term Rentals • Coppell ISD Says Masks Stay On

Mar 07, 2021

DART’s Silver Line is coming to Coppell sooner than you might think. The City Council has given the transit agency the go-ahead to start construction of a train station, and it also gave its blessing for DART to acquire more property via eminent domain if necessary.

Let’s start with the less-controversial aspect of the previous sentence. The Silver Line will run between DFW Airport and Plano, with stops in Carrollton, Addison, and Richardson. The plans also include a Cypress Waters Station along Belt Line Road, JUST outside the Coppell city limits. Even though the future site of that station is in Dallas, Coppell owns the land. I could try to describe exactly where it will be located, but this picture’s worth a thousand words:

Coppell is planning to sell the parcels labeled CB1-028A, CB1-028B, and CB1-029 to DART, and the council will supposedly approve that sale in the near future. But on Feb. 23, the council unanimously approved a “stop-gap measure” so that DART’s contractor, Archer Western Herzog, can begin working on construction of the train station in advance of the sale.

Now, let’s touch the proverbial third rail known as “eminent domain.” Just in case that term is new to you, Merriam-Webster defines it thusly:

“a right of a government to take private property for public use by virtue of the superior dominion of the sovereign power over all lands within its jurisdiction.”

To a certain segment of the population, them’s fightin’ words!

When presenting a resolution in support of DART’s right to acquire two properties in the city, Deputy City Manager Traci Leach stressed that Coppell itself is not using eminent domain. But under state law and the transit agency’s own policies, she said, DART cannot use eminent domain without authorization from the city in which the properties sit.

Discussion of the resolution during the Feb. 23 meeting was brief. Council member John Jun asked Leach whether the properties were empty, and Leach said she didn’t believe they were. (They’re not.) Jun also asked whether the occupants of those properties would relocate within Coppell, and Leach said she didn’t know. The properties’ addresses and the businesses were never mentioned during the meeting, but this image, which was attached to DART’s request for approval, makes it clear they’re talking about the southeast corner of South Belt Line Road and East Belt Line Road:

That corner houses a Chevron station, a Domino’s Pizza, and Rozana Market and Restaurant, among other businesses. We’ll have more on this in a future edition of the Coppell Chronicle.

Stay in Your Lane, Lewisville

There are parts of Coppell that are not within the boundaries of the Coppell Independent School District. One of those parts, the Coppell Greens neighborhood, is in Denton County while the rest of Coppell is in Dallas County. Meanwhile, the entire Cypress Waters development, which is part of Coppell ISD, is also within Dallas’ city limits, even though it’s on an island relative to the rest of Big D.

Suffice it to say, municipal boundaries can be confusing. Maybe that confusion explains why this electrical box in Coppell is covered with a promotion for Lewisville’s city website.

The box is on the southwest corner of Denton Tap Road and the Sam Rayburn Tollway, aka State Highway 121. When I noticed its decor, I thought to myself, “Wait, is that corner in Lewisville?” A little online research shows that the answer is “almost, but not quite.”

If you look up “Coppell, TX” on Google Maps, you’ll see that the portion of 121 that is west of Denton Tap is in Coppell, while the portion of the tollway that is east of Denton Tap is in Lewisville. Even more confusingly, the shopping centers on either side of that eastern portion – Market Street/Whataburger to the north and Run On/Tommy Tamale to the south – are in Coppell.

The city boundaries become harder to see the more you zoom in on Google Maps, so I went to the Dallas County Elections Department website, where you can look up high-res PDFs of voting precincts in every city and school district in the county. (“Does this guy know how to party or what?”) As the map below demonstrates, there is a bit of Lewisville that dips into Dallas County, but it does not quite reach the corner where that Lewisville-branded electrical box sits.

What does all of this mean? If nothing else, it means I have time on my hands, hence the existence of the Coppell Chronicle.

Neighbors Concerned About Short-Term Rentals

Unless they’re branded with advertisements for encroaching cities, electrical boxes are something that most of just visually tune out. The same is true of telephone poles. We know they’re there, but our eyes and brains don’t overtly register them as we drive or walk past them every day.

I would put a privacy gate on Deforest Road in this same category of things that are easily overlooked. Because my son has buddies who live in the neighborhoods along Deforest, I’ve driven down that street dozens of times. Yet I’ve never noticed the gate that leads to a home with a Deforest street address. However, the blue “proposed rezoning” sign that was recently placed next to the gate is a lot more distinct.

That residence was the subject of a public hearing during the most recent meeting of the Coppell Planning and Zoning Commission. The Coppell Chronicle is not going to be in the business of writing about home renovations on a weekly basis, but this case caused so much concern from neighbors that I wanted to do what I could to help set the record straight.

Behind the aforementioned gate is a long driveway – about a quarter of a mile – that leads to the house in question. That driveway runs between two cul-de-sacs: Inglenook Court and Stratford Lane. You cannot see the house in question from the north end of either cul-de-sac. (I couldn’t see it, at least, when I drove down both of them yesterday.)

City planner Mary Paron-Boswell told the Planning and Zoning Commission that many residents of Inglenook and Stratford contacted her because they were concerned about one or more of these questions:

Would the property be subdivided or converted into a multi-family property?
Would the property become a business, such as a venue for weddings or similar events?
Would the property be marketed as a short-term rental via websites such as Airbnb or Vrbo?

According to the agenda for the Planning and Zoning meeting, the 5-acre Deforest property is already a planned development district. The commission was asked to approve its conversion to a different type of planned development district “to incorporate the existing carriage house as a part of the Planned Development District and to allow the addition of a guest suite, pool pavilion, game room, greenhouse, porch, and new entry gate.”

Just in case that list of amenities doesn’t make it clear, this is an expensive property. It’s valued on the tax rolls at $1,799,060. (The inclusion of those final 60 bucks cracks me up.) For comparison’s sake, the average taxable value of the homes on Inglenook and Stratford is about $1,040,000.

To assuage the concerns of Inglenook and Stratford residents, Paron-Boswell said the owner of the Deforest property told her he has no plans to turn it into a short-term rental; the guest suite will be for visiting family members. Additionally, one of the proposed written conditions on the approval of the zoning change was “The accessory units shall not be rented or leased out.”

Commissioner Ed Maurer asked whether that condition would prevent the owner from leasing the main house, either on a short-term or long-term basis. Paron-Boswell said she would run that condition by the city attorney. Later, commissioner Glen Portman put forth a motion that the application be approved if that condition was changed to “The accessory units shall not be rented or leased out separately from the main single-family residence.” That motion was unanimously approved.

Another condition is that the city will not be held responsible for any damage that the Coppell Fire Department might cause to the property when responding to an emergency. City staff was concerned that the asphalt driveway might not support the weight of a fire engine in certain weather conditions.

“This house is a little bit different in terms of, you’ve got to drive about a quarter of a mile before you get up to the house,” Paron-Boswell told the Planning and Zoning Commission. “Typically, most residences, you can fight a fire from the street, and that street is typically made of concrete.”

One other thing I learned from this hearing: Coppell defines a residence as a building with a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen under one roof. “You can have two out of the three and not qualify as a residence,” Paron-Boswell said.

Coppell ISD Says Masks Stay on

As every Texan knows, Gov. Greg Abbott announced last week that, effective Wednesday, businesses can open at 100 percent capacity and the statewide mask mandate is no more. There was some initial confusion about how this would affect public schools, until the Texas Education Agency clarified that a school district’s “current practices on masks may continue unchanged.” That prompted Coppell ISD Superintendent Brad Hunt to announce that the district’s masks requirement remains in effect for “all of our employees, students, and visitors.”

The same can’t be said of the Cozby Library and Community Commons. On Friday afternoon, the Coppell library announced on Facebook that it will be reopening on Tuesday “to allow quick visits to browse and checkout materials, use a computer, or use a study table.” When someone asked whether masks would be required inside the building, this was the library’s response:

“Unfortunately, we will not be requiring masks. All staff will continue to wear masks, and we will have masks available for anyone that forgets one. But we are unable to enforce mask wearing in the building. Our hope is that most people will continue to wear masks.”

Dan Koller was an editor at The Dallas Morning News from 2000 to 2008, and he led the newsroom at Park Cities People and its affiliated newspapers from 2008 to 2014. During that time, he and the staff of People Newspapers were honored multiple times by the Texas Press Association and the Local Media Association.

Dan, his wife, and their sons moved to Coppell in December of 2012. Since then, he has been a Coppell Baseball Association coach, a Cub Scouts Pack 857 Den Leader and Cubmaster, a member of two Coppell ISD facilities planning committees, and a candidate for the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees.