Coppell Chronicle Vol. 4, No. 12
City Won’t Stripe All Courts for Pickleball • Old Town Parking Philosophy Stays in Place • Trustees Earn Extra Credit for Training • Latest Valley Ranch Plan Met With Disdain
Because today is not only Mother’s Day but also the 22nd anniversary of our wedding, I gave my wife/muse/editor the day off. Any typos you may find in this edition are solely my responsibility.
City Won’t Stripe All Courts for Pickleball
Despite all of the pickleball pontificating that’s happened in Coppell recently, the city’s staff isn’t ready to give up on courts exclusively devoted to tennis.
Pickleball proponents pleaded for additional courts and more access to the existing courts during the April 1 meeting of the Coppell Parks and Recreation Board and the April 9 meeting of the Coppell City Council. One of their requests was painting pickleball lines on all of the courts at the Wagon Wheel Tennis and Pickleball Center.
“Just paint more lines — if for no other reason, optionality,” Stephen Harris told the council. “Paint more lines on the tennis courts, and apparently, it takes an act of the City Council to do this!”
(See “Pickleball Players Apply Full-Court Press” in Vol. 4, No. 9.)
When the council got together for a work session on April 30, one of their topics was short- and long-term plans for the Wagon Wheel facility. Although they took no official action on that date, Council Member Jim Walker advocated for painting pickleball lines on all of the tennis courts.
“Part of the frustration, as I understand it, has been that there’ll be tennis courts out there that aren’t being utilized at particular times, but they’re not lined for pickleball, and so the optionality just doesn’t exist,” Walker said.
The April 30 discussion was led by Assistant Director of Community Experiences Sheri Belmont, who said adding pickleball lines to one more tennis court was a possibility. But she said the staff would not recommend “double lining” every court at Wagon Wheel because that might upset some tennis purists. Belmont said facilities in other communities have lost users after turning all of their courts into hybrid venues for pickleball and tennis.
Walker also suggested that non-residents should pay “quite a bit more” to play at Wagon Wheel than residents are charged. The current fees for open play or court reservations are $3 for residents and $3.50 for non-residents.
Belmont said a fee adjustment is one of three short-term changes that should take effect on June 1. The Community Experiences Department wanted to wait until the Wagon Wheel facility’s new manager came on board, and Joe Weber’s first day in that role was April 29. For the past couple of years, Weber has managed operations and events for Frisco-based U.S. Youth Soccer. He replaced Eric Clay, who left Coppell last September to become the manager of a new $4.5 million pickleball facility in Southlake.
The other short-term changes will be expanding the Wagon Wheel facility’s operating hours and adding a new session for pickleball open play. Council Member Brianna Hinojosa-Smith asked whether those changes would necessitate hiring more people, and Belmont said not necessarily.
In the long term, the city has hired PROS Consulting to conduct a feasibility study to determine how the Wagon Wheel facility could be expanded and whether pickleball courts could be built elsewhere in the city.
Council Member Mark Hill said the Coppell Senior and Community Center would be an “ideal location” for new pickleball courts. “We have plenty of land there,” he said.
Old Town Parking Philosophy Stays in Place
Business owners advocating for reserved parking spaces in Old Town are out of luck for the time being.
During the Coppell City Council’s April 30 work session, Deputy City Manager Kent Collins said the staff would not recommend any kind of reserved parking that would require city enforcement. He said Old Town was developed with the idea that all street parking would be shared by the neighborhood’s businesses and residents.
“We believe that this type of shared parking is integral to the character of Old Town, and we continue to implement parking in alignment with this model,” Collins said after comparing Old Town to Southlake’s Town Square and Grapevine’s Main Street. “Change would mean charting new territory for this type of development.”
As they did during a March council meeting, veterinarians Michele Broadhurst and Pam Montgomery-Fittz spoke during the work session on behalf of their disabled patients and those pets’ owners. The doctors work in a building next to George Coffee + Provisions, and they said the spaces closest to their front door are routinely occupied by George’s customers for hours at a time.
(See “Old Town Parking Signs Spark Complaints” in Vol. 4, No. 7.)
Council Member Biju Mathew asked Collins if the staff had any recommendations to address the doctors’ concerns. Collins said those concerns conflict with Old Town’s shared-parking philosophy; the purpose of the April 30 discussion was to find out whether the council wanted to change that philosophy.
The council’s longest-tenured member, Brianna Hinojosa-Smith, recommended maintaining the status quo until a more comprehensive discussion of Old Town happens at a summer retreat.
“Historically, we wanted this to be an open parking community where people would park and walk to eat and shop and do a lot of different things,” Hinojosa-Smith said.
Council Member Kevin Nevels agreed: “If everybody’s kind of on an equal playing field of ‘everybody shares the parking,’ then we’re not showing favoritism towards any particular business in this publicly accessed parking. So while I do have a big heart for some of the stories that I’ve heard, that is the fundamental philosophy, and I think we should stick with that.”
In response to a question from Mathew, Collins said there are 1,045 public parking spaces in Old Town. They are marked in yellow on the map in the middle of this slide.
Council Member Jim Walker scoffed at the idea that somebody would park at one of the spaces on the south side of that map and then walk to a business. Walker said he’d like to see a study that gauges how often parking spaces turn over, and he also suggested that the Farmers Market vendors who set up their booths in the parking lot west of the pavilion could be moved to the grassy expanse east of Twisted Root.
“If we’re going to be serious about supporting our businesses, we’ve got to come up with some way of accommodating parking that’s in the proximity of businesses,” Walker said.
Walker wondered what will happen if Taqueria La Ventana ever opens, or if the land under Old Town’s dormant church ever gets developed.
“My primary concern is accommodating the businesses and not dissuading future businesses from coming in because we get a bad rap for having a parking problem,” he said.
Trustees Earn Extra Credit for Training
State law requires the trustees of public school districts to participate in continuing education. It also requires an annual accounting of how trustees are doing in that regard.
During the April 22 meeting of the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees, Board President David Caviness listed the eight areas for trustees’ continuing education:
Local district orientation
Orientation to the Texas Education Code
Post-legislative update to the Texas Education Code
Team building
Additional continuing education
Evaluating student academic performance and setting goals
Identifying and reporting potential victims of sexual abuse, human trafficking, and other maltreatment of children
School safety
That fifth category of “additional continuing education” calls for 10 hours of training in a trustee’s first year of service and five hours in each subsequent year. Caviness said he has exceeded the required amount of training by 11 hours. That sounds pretty good, but wait until you hear how much training his peers have completed.
Ranna Raval has completed 13.75 extra hours.
Jobby Mathew has completed 18 extra hours.
Leigh Walker has completed 20.75 extra hours.
Manish Sethi has completed 27.75 extra hours.
Nichole Bentley has completed 28.75 extra hours.
Anthony Hill has completed 40 extra hours.
I’ve asked a couple of Coppell City Council members whether the state mandates any similar training on their part. They confirmed that no such continuing education is required. That’s something to keep in mind if you’re considering a run for local office and can’t decide whether you’d like to pursue a school board seat or a city council position.
Here’s some more free advice for aspiring candidates: When you’re thinking about how many yard signs to order, err on the side of not enough. I ran for the Coppell ISD board in 2018 and ordered 500 signs. That turned out to be about 400 too many. They were all sitting in my garage until last week, when they found a new home in the Camelot Landfill.
Latest Valley Ranch Plan Met With Disdain
The fourth version of a plan to develop a vacant parcel in Valley Ranch has less support than the three previous versions.
Last year, the Irving Planning and Zoning Commission took three votes on the land next to MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church. In April, six of the nine commissioners recommended approval of the original plan for 77 townhomes. In July, six of them recommended approval of a revised plan for 40 zero-lot-line homes. But in October, only four commissioners were in favor of a plan to build about 37 houses on the property.
That third version was the only one that the developer, Irving resident Sateesh Allada, brought to the City Council. It was rejected on a 5-4 vote.
(See “Valley Ranch Development Narrowly Defeated” in Vol. 3, No. 36.)
Last Monday, the Planning and Zoning Commission considered Allada’s latest proposal, which calls for 31 homes in a subdivision with a single point of access. A memo from Senior Planner Gina Costanza-Grant notes that Irving’s fire code mandates ceiling sprinklers if a neighborhood with one access point has more than 30 homes.
As he has done before, Allada is seeking variances to his proposed zoning category. The rules say each lot must be at least 50 feet wide; Allada wants to trim that by 5 feet. The rules cap lot coverage at 40 percent; Allada wants to go up to 60 percent. The rules also limit building height to two stories or 25 feet; Allada wants to build them as tall as two and a half stories or 35 feet.
Although she supported Allada’s first three proposals for developing the land, Commissioner Debbi Haacke said she couldn’t support this one. The Valley Ranch resident said the fourth plan would allow two-story houses ranging from 3,500 square feet to 4,500 square feet on lots that aren’t much different from her own. Haacke said she lives in a one-story, 1,700-square-foot house.
“If I were to think that every single one of those was two-story houses with no trees around it, with that size width, that’s huge to me,” Haacke said. “I feel like that’s very dense. I feel like we went in the wrong direction this fourth time.”
Haacke was one of eight commissioners who voted to recommend disapproval of Allada’s latest plan. If he chooses to proceed to the City Council, the case should be on their May 30 agenda.
Updates from the Sports Desk
• Prosper ended the playoff dreams of Coppell High’s boys soccer, girls soccer, and baseball teams this school year, but the Coppell Lacrosse Association’s girls high school team avenged their classmates. The Cowgirls defeated Prosper on Saturday by a score of 15-11 in the Texas High School Girls Lacrosse League’s Division II state semifinals. Coppell ended up losing to Houston Episcopal in overtime, 10-9, in today’s title game.
• The Coppell Lacrosse Association’s boys high school team ended their season with a 14-11 playoff loss to Kinkaid last Sunday.
• The Coppell High School girls golf team — Riya Bapna, Alicia Bellendir, Isabell Nguyen, Nethra Sheri, and Sabrina Tam — finished third in the UIL Class 6A Golf Tournament on Tuesday, one stroke ahead of Southlake Carroll. On an individual basis, Bellendir and Sheri were among six golfers who tied for ninth place.
• Lexie Patton will represent Coppell High School at the UIL Class 6A Tennis Tournament in San Antonio this week. The quarterfinals are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. on Thursday, and the finals should start at 9 a.m. on Friday.
• The Coppell Youth Soccer Association is registering players for its fall season. Practices will start in August, and games will begin on Sept. 7. The deadline to sign up is July 6.
What’s on the Agendas?
• Tuesday’s Coppell City Council meeting will be preceded by a reception at 6:30 p.m. honoring Mayor Pro Tem John Jun for his years of service to the community. Jun is leaving the council because he is the Republican Party’s nominee to represent most of Coppell and the rest of House District 115 in the Texas Legislature. (The Democratic Party’s nominee is Cassandra Hernandez.)
• The Board of Directors of Denton County Levee Improvement District No. 1 will meet at 11 a.m. on Thursday at 2951 Lake Vista Drive. I attended their previous meeting in March, which led to an article called “Levee District Needs a Few New Pumps.” As a reminder, here are the district’s boundaries.
• The Coppell ISD Board of Trustees will convene at 8 a.m. on Thursday for a Level IV appeal hearing regarding a grievance filed by Venky Venkatraman. Venkatraman tells me his grievance stems from a 2023 article about his daughter that says “she endured bullying from classmates because of her South Asian heritage.” His daughter graduated from Coppell High in 2017.
Chronicle Crumbs
• The City of Coppell is gathering data and feedback via a Retail & Dining Survey. It takes only a few minutes to answer questions about which specific restaurants or types of restaurants you’d like to see added to our local lineup. Chick-fil-A fans, this is your moment!
• The city’s fifth annual Grad-venger Hunt has begun, which means the Community Development Department has placed signs around town to congratulate Coppell residents who are graduating from high school. I wrote an article about this effort last year, when my son was among the honorees. (See “City Honors Seniors Via Grad-venger Hunt” in Vol. 3, No. 12.)
• During Wednesday’s meeting of the city’s Future Oriented Approach to Residential Development Task Force, Director of Community Development Mindi Hurley provided some statistics on the residential rehabilitation grants that I wrote about in last week’s edition. (See “Nearly 700 Homeowners Seek Rehab Grants” in Vol. 4, No. 11.) Hurley said her staff processed all 50 in-person applications within 15 minutes. She also said 70 online applications were completed in the first minute after the window opened. Hurley said a thorough report will be presented to the City Council on May 28.
• During Thursday’s meeting of the Coppell Library Advisory Board, librarian Jennifer Franz said a karaoke machine, an electric drill set, and a Blu-ray player have been added to the Library of Things. (Actually, the collection is already on its second Blu-ray player; the first one broke.)
• Last month, a subscriber asked me to look into why an eastbound on ramp for State Highway 121, due east of Denton Tap Road, has been closed. This request slipped my mind until I tried to use that ramp. North Texas Tollway Authority spokesman Michael Rey told me a contractor is “working on the barriers” along the tollway. They expect to have their work completed at this location in late June, weather permitting. They will then move down the road and close the entrance ramp east of MacArthur Boulevard.
• Have you noticed the massive structure that’s being framed on Rockbrook Drive in Lewisville, across State Highway 121 from the Coppell city limits? A form filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation says it will be known as the DFW Badminton Center. About a mile and a half to the west, Vistara Sports already offers 18 courts for badminton or pickleball.
• According to another form filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Astra Zeneca is spending $55 million to increase its capacity for manufacturing Lokelma — a drug that treats adults with high levels of potassium in their blood — at its facility on Southwestern Drive in Coppell. (See “Prescription Powder Produced Only in Coppell” in Vol. 3, No. 26.)
• If you patronize the Target on Hebron Parkway in Lewisville, then you may be excited to learn that Dutch Bros Coffee plans to build a store with a drive-thru nearby, on a vacant parcel due east of Jason’s Deli. The Lewisville City Council approved the requested zoning changes last Monday.
• The owners of the multiplex on Walton Boulevard in Valley Ranch want to subdivide their property into three lots. On Monday, the Irving Planning and Zoning Commission followed the city staff’s recommendation to deny that request, based on no fewer than 18 “deficiencies” in the replat paperwork. (See “Coming Soon: Sequel for Dormant Multiplex” in Vol. 3, No. 38.)
• Trivia question: Which one of these deceased celebrities does NOT have an autographed photo hanging in the lobby of Local Diner — James Caan, Sammy Davis Jr., Dom DeLuise, or Bob Hope?
Community Calendar
State of Education Update: Coppell ISD Superintendent Brad Hunt and Dallas College North Lake President Christa Slejko will discuss recent achievements and future initiatives between 8:30 and 10 a.m. on Tuesday at the Coppell Arts Center. Admission is free, but RSVPs are requested.
Ride of Silence: Cyclists around the world periodically gather to honor their peers who have been killed or injured by motorists. The 17th annual Coppell edition will begin at Town Center at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
Unified Soccer Game: Coppell’s Special Olympians will play soccer with an assist from the Coppell High School varsity girls team. The game will start at 5 p.m. on Thursday at Buddy Echols Field.
Celebrate Cozby Library: This celebration of the library’s 50th anniversary will feature games, treats, and a giant inflatable slide. The fun is scheduled to happen between 10 a.m. and noon on Saturday in Town Center Plaza.
Spring Gala: Ballet Ensemble of Texas dancers will perform at the Coppell Arts Center at 1, 3, and 5 p.m. on May 19.
Coppell 5K: The annual race benefiting Coppell Special Olympics will begin at 8 a.m. on June 1 at Andrew Brown Park East.
I’m impressed by our school board going above & beyond in getting extra hours of training/education, so they can do their jobs and make informed decisions! And I’m proud that we voted for these great citizens!
But in the down side, I’m embarrassed & saddened by how few Coppellians vote in our local elections!
Thank you for another informative Chronicle!
3,500-4,500 square foot zero-lot-line homes in Valley Ranch are a really bad idea. As a current Valley Ranch resident I am glad this proposed development is nowhere near my home, but I still wish to oppose them. How do I register my objections?