Coppell Chronicle Vol. 3, No. 35
Short-Term Rental Has Long List of Issues • Senior Living Proposed Near DART Bridge • Voters to Consider Amendments and Bonds • Coppell Lacrosse Eyes More Exposure
Your favorite weekly newsletter is about to join an association called LION Publishers. In this context, LION is an abbreviation for “local independent online news.” The organization’s focus is helping independent news publishers build more sustainable businesses.
You can help the Coppell Chronicle become a more sustainable business by forwarding this edition to a friend or sharing it on social media. The first article will be outside the paywall, and that article is a doozy.
Short-Term Rental Has Long List of Issues
There’s a home on Crestview Court that neighborhood kids used to call “the castle house.” Over the years, that castle has lost its luster.
The city’s Code Compliance Division has fielded several complaints about this property. The issues have ranged from high grass and weeds to overgrown tree limbs and outdoor storage, including building materials blocking the sidewalk. Additionally, there have been reports of roosters and chickens.
The Coppell Police Department is also familiar with this home. Since the property last changed hands in 2017, the cops have been called more than 15 times for a variety of reasons: suspicious activity and criminal mischief, including nudity and slashed tires; heavy traffic and parking violations; and noise complaints, including loud arguments and the production of at least one music video. Most if not all of these issues stem from the house being listed on Airbnb as a short-term rental.
Given that history, I expected Thursday’s public hearing on the owners’ application for a short-term-rental permit to be a raucous affair. I expected to see a long line of neighbors airing grievances. I expected vigorous denials of the various infractions laid out in a city planner’s report. And I expected the Coppell Planning and Zoning Commission to grill the applicants about the alleged activities at their home.
My expectations were not met.
Only two neighbors signed up to speak during the public hearing, and we easily could have had none. Barbara Davidson admitted she was there only because she didn’t know she could have registered her opposition in writing. Davidson has lived a block north of the Crestview castle for three decades.
“It just doesn’t seem like a good thing to have in a single-family-zoned neighborhood,” she said. “When we bought back in ’92, it was all single-family homes, and I had no idea we were going to have mini-hotels sometime in the future.”
The other neighbor who spoke in opposition, Greg Frnka, was there to represent a client during another hearing. Frnka said he used to stroll around Crestview Court while walking his dog, but he avoids the cul-de-sac these days due to the number of cars, the intermittently blocked sidewalk, and all the junk visible in the applicants’ garage.
“It just depreciates everybody’s home value in the neighborhood,” Frnka said.
The Crestview castle is owned by Shahid Aziz and his wife, Salma Shaikh. In a letter to the city, Aziz said they turned to Airbnb as a revenue stream after their three sons moved out and stopped pitching in on the mortgage.
That letter says they rent out only two rooms, but Senior Planner Mary Paron-Boswell showed the commissioners an Airbnb listing that touts three. She also displayed a guest’s review that referenced “room 7” as the “economy room.”
“I’m not sure how you rent out ‘room 7’ of a five-bedroom house,” Paron-Boswell told the commissioners.
One possible explanation for that math problem: During a recent inspection of the property, when city employees were granted access to only two bedrooms, they noticed an illegal addition on the rear of the house. Paron-Boswell said the city has no record of permits or inspections for this structure. “Staff has no idea what the building is being used for,” she said.
When Aziz spoke to the commission, he did not address the mysterious addition or the police reports. He focused instead on the unkempt landscaping plus Paron-Boswell’s statement about multiple smoke detectors being broken, jerry-rigged, or missing.
“I understand some codes are not met,” Aziz said. “But it’s not a big thing. We can fix it.”
I was hoping that one or more of the five commissioners in attendance would ask Aziz specific questions about the nudity or the poultry or the music video. (Examples: What was the artist’s name? What was the song’s title? Did the video feature any chickens?) Alas, the only question came from Chair Edmund Haas: “I’ve seen the police reports, the code issues — just generally, what’s going on?”
Aziz’s response focused on the smoke detectors and the lawn. “I promise that we will fix it, and this will not be an issue,” he said.
That was apparently not enough to convince the commissioners, who unanimously voted to recommend denial of the couple’s permit application. Aziz and Shaikh will have an opportunity to win over the City Council on Nov. 14, but I don’t like their chances.
The commissioners took a few more 5-0 votes on Thursday:
• They recommended approval of a zoning change for a 17.7-acre property on the north side of State Highway 121, between Business 121 and the Coppell Greens neighborhood. That’s where a company called Lovett Industrial aims to build a 257,600-square-foot warehouse augmented by a pair of two-story office buildings. The City Council will have the final say on Nov. 14.
• They recommended approval of a zoning change for the strip of live-work units that Chris Collins is constructing on South Coppell Road. The current zoning calls for professional office uses, with a medical office permitted in one of the five buildings. If the council approves Collins’ request on Nov. 14, retail/service businesses would be allowed in each building. (By the way, Collins said he has three of the five properties under contract.)
• They approved a request from former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Anthony Spencer to divide his 4.2-acre estate on Deforest Road into two lots. This is a done deal, because the City Council does not consider replat requests.
Senior Living Proposed Near DART Bridge
The commissioners considered one other case on Thursday, and they were divided on this one. As with a lot things involving real estate, it all came down to location, location, location.