Coppell Chronicle Vol. 1, No. 3

Is Frontenis Center Facing Its Endgame? • Cutting Corners Isn’t Necessarily Bad • Smoothie King Gets Council’s Approval • Coronavirus Quick Hits • A Couple of Housekeeping Items

Is Frontenis Center Facing Its Endgame?

Ever since I moved to Coppell, I’ve been intrigued by the large, open-air structure at the southern end of Mockingbird Lane – but never quite intrigued enough to look into it. So I chuckled when I found out, in the same week that I resolved to launch this newsletter, that the property beneath that odd structure was the subject of a public hearing.

On Feb. 25, the Coppell Planning and Zoning Commission approved a request to replat the property into three residential lots. During the hearing, nobody explicitly said the structure – which is listed as the Frontenis Center in city documents but has been marketed as Southwest Frontenis and Frontenis Dallas – would be demolished. But I don’t see how you can divide the property like this without knocking it down:

So what is frontenis? In an attempt to figure that out, I stopped by on Saturday morning and watched as a group of five men took turns playing the game in singles and doubles matches.

Like tennis or squash, frontenis is a racquet sport. There’s a long wall to the players’ left and narrower walls behind and in front of them. To their right is just a boundary line, and beyond that line – at the Frontenis Center, at least – is a net that keeps the ball from bouncing onto Mockingbird. If the ball goes outside the boundary line, which is also painted on the walls, the volley ends and somebody gets a point … I think. Here’s a video that may help.

One of the things that’s always mystified me about the Frontenis Center is how it came to be built on the edge of a residential neighborhood. As it turns out, the question ought to be how did a neighborhood come to be built next to a frontenis facility, because it was there first.

According to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, the Frontenis Center was built in 1985 and is valued at just $213,940. By comparison, the house directly across Mockingbird, which was built in 1993, is valued at $730,000. The six houses on Pelican and Sora lanes that share an alley with the Frontenis Center – all but one of which were built between 1990 and 1994 – have an average value of nearly $477,000.

After watching the video of the Planning and Zoning Commission hearing on the replat request, I tried – via emails and phone calls – to get in touch with the men listed as “applicants” and “developer” on the request. I was able to get one of the applicants on the phone, and all he would tell me was, “We’re in the process of working on this property, and I just don’t have anything to say right now.” There’s a “for sale” sign out front, but the agent whose name is on the sign told me any questions would have to be answered by the owner.

The players I met on Saturday morning had driven to Coppell from Dallas, Frisco, Plano, and Mesquite to enjoy what one of them told me is the only frontenis facility in the United States. When I told them it may be history soon, they seemed nonplussed. The Mesquite resident said he has been playing there for 10 years, and the facility’s demise has long been rumored.

When I asked what he will do if the Frontenis Center is knocked down, he smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “That’s it,” he said. “We’d have to go to Mexico. Or Vancouver. You’re talking about a 10-hour drive to play a 45-minute game.”

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Cutting Corners Isn’t Necessarily Bad

Every once in a while, in an attempt to burnish my Father of the Year credentials, I unplug my teenage son from the Matrix (i.e., turn off YouTube) and make him take a lap around our neighborhood on his recumbent tricycle. If I’m feeling particularly sadistic, I make his mother tag along.

The last time she joined us on this jaunt, I pointed out that I direct our son to cross our street before he reaches the end of our block, because neither of the corners at that T-bone intersection feature curb ramps that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. As we were discussing this, I said, “I probably ought to call the city and ask what it would take to have ramps installed here.”

Lo and behold, a crew showed up in our neighborhood on March 5 and turned both of those corners into ramps. But I never called anybody at the city. Is it possible that I have telepathic powers?

Jamie Brierton, the capital programs administrator in the city’s Public Works Department, had a much simpler explanation: One of my neighbors called to ask about the ramps before I could. (Perhaps I telepathically influenced that unnamed neighbor.)

Time for a brief history lesson: Our neighborhood was developed in the mid-1980s, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was not signed into law until 1990. In 2010, the ADA was updated with new standards for sidewalks and intersections that didn’t take effect until 2012. In 2016, Coppell adopted an ADA Self-Evaluation and Transition Plan. Five years later, the curbs at the end of my block became ramps as part of that plan.

On the same day the ramp work began, I noticed several stretches of sidewalk in my neighborhood had been repaved recently. I assumed these two projects were related, but Brierton told me it was a coincidence. She said the new ramps were funded under the city’s fiscal 2021 budget, but the repaved sidewalks represented some of the final dollars in the fiscal 2020 budget.

Brierton said any Coppell residents who have busted sidewalks or non-ADA-compliant curbs can let the city know by calling 972-462-5150. Depending on the scope of the project, it will be completed in-house by city staff or by one of two contractors.

“Each year, as we receive budget money, the contractors move from quadrant to quadrant within the city, completing the ongoing list,” she said.

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Smoothie King Gets Council’s Approval

As you may recall from the first edition of the Coppell Chronicle, there are plans in the works to convert the former site of Mulberry’s Garment Care into a Smoothie King, which would be directly across Denton Tap Road from a Smoothie Factory.

City planner Matt Steer said he followed up with the neighbor who spoke against the proposed zoning change during the Planning and Zoning Commission’s Feb. 25 hearing. “She was impressed at how thorough the review was and was satisfied with the conditions added,” Steer said. One of those conditions was that the speaker on Smoothie King’s drive-thru menu would be pointed to the south, away from her house to the west.

However, about 10 emails opposing the zoning change were read into the record during the City Council’s March 9 hearing on the matter. A few mentioned the potential for increased traffic due to the drive-thru, but Director of Public Works Kent Collins said the impact on traffic would be insignificant. The rest of the emails were written in support of Smoothie Factory and were obviously part of a coordinated effort, as they used identical language, such as residents preferring “locally owned coffee and smoothie shops around town” versus “national chains.”

There are at least two issues with that argument:

1. Smoothie Factory can be described as a national chain. Its website lists a handful of locations in Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, and New Jersey, in addition to its two dozen in Texas. (Smoothie King has stores in 32 states, plus the District of Columbia.)

2. Protecting small businesses from potential competitors is “not the purview of council,” as council member Gary Roden put it.

“What I heard was that we wanted to support small businesses,” Roden said after the emails were read. “I would hope that our citizens would continue to support the small local businesses that are already in operation.”

Council member Cliff Long pointed out that Smoothie Factory is not the only “small business” in the discussion. The property that will house the Smoothie King is owned by Mahesh Nasta, a Coppell resident for 15 years. Another Coppell resident, Greg Frnka, owns a Coppell-based architecture firm that counts Nasta as a client. And Mayor Karen Hunt had to recuse herself from the hearing “because she works for a bank that has financial involvement in there, so that’s another small business in Coppell, Texas,” Long said. (Hunt is the Coppell market president for Frost Bank, where Nasta is a client.)

“It’s not always clear on the surface who you’re talking about when those things happen,” Long added. “You need to consider the whole when you’re talking about the businesses here in town.”

In the end, the council approved the zoning change after adding one more restriction: The noise level can’t exceed 60 decibels at the western property line.

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Coronavirus Quick Hits

▪ Coppell ISD had no new COVID-19 diagnoses to report on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. I’m told that there have been two-day stretches like that before, but this was the first time the district recorded no new cases for three consecutive days. Unfortunately, the streak ended on Friday, when two new cases were added to CISD’s COVID-19 Dashboard: a remote student at Coppell High School and a remote student at Coppell Middle School North.

▪ Could that stretch of three days without a new case be attributed to a dip in testing for COVID-19? The Texas Tribune reported on Friday that the state’s level of testing has dropped to its lowest point since last fall. You know how the Go Get Tested site at Andrew Brown Park Central used to have a line of cars that spilled out onto Denton Tap Road? When I drove by on Friday afternoon, the staff were all lost in their phones because they had nobody to test.

▪ Last Sunday, I told you that Coppell’s city facilities would have no masks requirements as of last Wednesday, when Gov. Greg Abbott lifted the statewide mandate. I know some Coppell residents who were upset about that, so they encouraged their friends and neighbors to contact the City Council. Perhaps their letter-writing campaign worked. On Friday, the city announced that the council will have a special called work session on Tuesday “to discuss COVID-19 policy for health and safety requirements, including masks, for city facilities.”

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A Couple of Housekeeping Items

If you’re enjoying the Coppell Chronicle, please forward it to some friends and neighbors. As I said in the debut edition, it will be free through next Sunday, and then most of the content will go behind a modest paywall. I’ll be asking subscribers to pay $24 annually, which comes out to $2 per month or less than 50 cents per week.

If you have a content suggestion, or if you notice something that needs to be corrected, please don’t hesitate to let me know. A reader who identified himself as a traffic engineer told me that what I identified as an “electrical box” in last week’s Coppell Chronicle is actually a traffic signal controller cabinet. “The traffic signal at the intersection of SH 121 and Denton Tap is owned and operated by the City of Lewisville,” he said, “hence the Lewisville branding.” See, we’re all learning things here!

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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.