Coppell Chronicle Vol. 4, No. 16
Rehab Grants Program Appears to be Over • Gunfire Ruins Quiet Night at Home • Coppell Hires Claw Truck to Collect Debris • New Parking Rules Ignored on Ruby Road
This newsletter has added a lot of paid subscribers lately, so this is a good time to remind everyone that you have access to the archive on the Coppell Chronicle’s website, if you want to review any editions that were published before you signed up.
My partners at Substack allow me to create tabs on the website that pertain to recurring topics, including three that will be mentioned this week:
Rehab Grants Program Appears to be Over
The Coppell City Council is not inclined to spend more money on home renovations, in the short term or the long term.
Following the advice of its Future Oriented Approach to Residential Development Task Force, the council in February allocated $100,000 to residential rehabilitation grants. The pilot program generated 651 unique applications, and the money was split among the 13 quickest applicants on a first-come, first-served basis. That left 638 individuals or couples frustrated and disappointed.
“One thing that the pilot program showed is that there is a need and desire in the community for something,” Mayor Wes Mays said Saturday.
The council got together for a retreat on Saturday morning, when the first item on their agenda was a discussion of the grants program’s future. The $100,000 came from the $10.2 million the city received from the federal government under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). A majority of the council did not want to reassign any of the remaining ARPA dollars toward more grants, and none of our elected officials seemed interested in funding the program through local property taxes and sales taxes.
“I’m not hearing much support for using public funds for private purposes,” Mays said.
Mayor Pro Tem Kevin Nevels was the loudest proponent for spending more of the “free money” Coppell received from the feds on rehab grants. Nevels pointed out that the council allocated $2.75 million of those funds toward a pair of programs benefiting businesses, but less than 4 percent of that amount was dedicated to the program benefiting homeowners.
“Why not give a little more love to our citizens?” Nevels asked.
Council Member Don Carroll presented a counterpoint: The ARPA funds were intended to offset the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses were forced to shut down. Carroll also didn’t like putting city staffers in the position of picking winners and losers, and there would still be losers no matter how much money was reallocated.
“We have a hole we can’t possibly fill,” Carroll said.
During their May 28 meeting, the council approved spending the remaining $1.28 million worth of ARPA funds on nearly 30 line items. The most expensive of those is $420,000 for a veterans memorial. The list also includes $50,000 for new lobby furniture at The CORE, $12,000 for a new diving board, and $40,000 for a pickleball feasibility study. Feel free to peruse the list:
If the council had gone a different direction on Saturday, they would have had to undo part of what they approved on May 28. During Saturday’s debate, Council Member Jim Walker said the council should stick with their decision to spend the ARPA funds on projects that benefit the entire community.
“That’s already a huge win,” Walker said.
Director of Community Development Mindi Hurley has proposed spending $1 million from the city’s general fund ($200,000 annually for five years) on residential rehab grants. Until Saturday morning, I thought this proposal would be part of the budget for fiscal 2025, which begins this October; actually, this proposal wasn’t going to begin until fiscal 2026. But that’s a moot point, because the council clearly does not favor that proposal.
In the short term, Council Member Ramesh Premkumar worried that if the council did not fund more rehab grants with ARPA dollars, then the pilot program would be perceived as a failure and the council would be perceived as not listening to their constituents. This was Walker’s response to those concerns: “We’ll just get a hailstorm of criticism no matter what we do.”
Gunfire Ruins Quiet Night at Home
A stray bullet entered a Coppell woman’s home recently.
I spoke to this woman on Saturday afternoon. At her request, I am leaving her name out of this article, because she certainly didn’t ask for such notoriety. The incident happened late in the evening of June 1, when she and her adult daughter were watching TV.
The woman has owned her house on DaVinci Court for nearly 10 years. That cul-de-sac is off the northern end of North Coppell Road, near State Highway 121. She’s heard rapid gunshots in the area before, but she’d never called police in those situations because she couldn’t imagine it would be gunfire; she downplayed it to kids shooting off fireworks.
She dialed 911 on June 1, though, because that night’s barrage was different. “I’ve never heard something so loud and so alarming in my life,” she told me. She called 911 a second time that night after hearing her refrigerator’s glass door crack and finding the bullet there.
She said the bullet entered her house through the siding between two windows and pierced a chandelier rope before lodging in the fridge’s door. She and her daughter were sitting just 8 feet away, and there’s not much in that 8-foot span due to her home’s open floor plan.
I became aware of this incident because one of the woman’s neighbors wrote about it in the “Coppell, Texas” group on Facebook. That neighbor said the gunfire may have come from the wooded area along Denton Creek, which runs between DaVinci Court and the Westhaven subdivision. But the woman said police told her the shot came from a higher elevation, which would imply the gun was fired on the highway.
The neighbor said this was probably the fourth or fifth time DaVinci Court residents have heard rapid gunfire in the past few months. Residents of the Lakeside at Coppell apartment complex, which is not far away, said in the comments under his post that they’ve heard it too.
The Coppell Police Department’s weekly blotter summarizes the June 1 incident as “deadly conduct discharge firearm.” That phrase has appeared on the blotter two other times this year — on March 22 in the 500 block of Ruby Road (as documented here) and on May 11 in the 600 block of South MacArthur Boulevard.
Officer Kelly Luther, who speaks for the Coppell Police Department, told me on Friday afternoon that there are no known suspects in the June 1 incident. She said the investigation is ongoing.
Coppell Hires Claw Truck to Collect Debris
Last week’s edition included two pleas for patience from Coppell City Manager Mike Land regarding the collection of storm debris. As it turns out, not much patience was needed.
On Tuesday, the city announced that it had retained the services of Crowder Gulf, a firm that specializes in disaster recovery. Crowder Gulf’s truck with a giant claw arrived in Coppell on Friday, and I captured video of the claw outside of my home on Saturday afternoon.
Carrollton has also hired Crowder Gulf to supplement the usual collections performed by Republic Services, but a perusal of Lewisville’s social media leads me to believe that the onus is still on Republic employees in that community. Meanwhile, Irving’s recovery plan appears to be limited to offering overtime pay to the city’s in-house sanitation workers.
If you have questions about the debris cleanup, check out the city’s Severe Storms webpage.
New Parking Rules Ignored on Ruby Road
Last month, the Coppell City Council approved an ordinance that prohibits parking on the south side of Ruby Road, which runs between The Container Store’s headquarters and the Oak Park Village mobile home community. At the time, I estimated this would displace up to 45 cars and trucks each day. My estimation was based on the assumption that the vehicles’ owners would care about the new ordinance. That assumption may have been made in error.
The ordinance was put into practice last week. At first, multiple “NO PARKING THIS SIDE OF STREET” signs were installed. The day after those signs went up, dozens of vehicles were parked on the south side. By Saturday, the road had been restriped in accordance with the new rules. When I drove down Ruby that afternoon as I returned from a few errands, I had to straddle the new striping to avoid the 15 or so vehicles in the restricted area.
Ruby Road is lined with so many cars and trucks because most units in Oak Park Village have just two parking spaces, but many of the mobile homes are occupied by three or more drivers. I’m told the road also gets overflow parking from another mobile home community around the corner, Golden Triangle, which sits across Coppell Road from Wilson Elementary.
If these parking scofflaws do acknowledge the new rules, they might be tempted to put their vehicles in Wilson’s lot. However, spaces are scarcer than normal there this summer, because the lot is being used as a staging area for the school’s bond-funded renovations. Another alternative would be the parking lot at Wagon Wheel Park, but that would be quite a hike.
I asked Officer Kelly Luther whether Coppell police were offering a grace period before vehicles would be towed or ticketed on Ruby. Luther said the Police Department typically doesn't address parking violations until a complaint is received, as officers will always respond to a priority call first.
“I would encourage anyone who sees a parking violation, and would like to make a complaint, to contact the police non-emergency number to make the report,” she said. That number is 469-289-3270.
In other news of the vehicular variety …
• Irving has been touting its 24-hour Pothole Hotline lately. An article in the city’s latest newsletter says its Streets Division repairs between 7,000 and 10,000 potholes annually. Call 972-721-2303 to assign them more work.
• If your commute involves State Highway 114, then you may want to attend the Texas Department of Transportation’s June 20 open house regarding its plans for the highway. (There’s also an option for virtual attendance.)
• During my commute on Interstate 635 last Monday morning, I thought I saw the carcass of a feral hog on the shoulder, not far from the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. To ensure that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, I asked if any other members of the “Coppell, Texas” group on Facebook had seen it. Sure enough, several had, and one even provided a picture of the porker:
The hog was still there on Tuesday morning, so I alerted TxDOT and asked them to collect it. When I provided that update on Facebook, Karen Jenkins made me laugh with this reply: “Well, there goes our dinner plans.”
Chronicle Crumbs
• A groundbreaking ceremony for Fire Station 5 happened last Tuesday on Moore Road. A couple of weeks ago, a subscriber asked me if I knew how many of the surrounding homes would be on the same grid as the new station, thereby reducing their chances of being subjected to power outages. I told that subscriber I would look into it. Meanwhile, a different person posed the same question under the Facebook post from which I stole that photo, and Mayor Pro Tem Kevin Nevels said he would find out the answer. Whew! Glad to have that task removed from my to-do list.
• Do you want a T-shirt like the one modeled here by Coppell Arts Center Managing Director Ginene Delcioppo? Then you should participate in a survey about the Coppell Community Experiences Master Plan. Each respondent will get one of those shirts (while supplies last, of course).
• During Monday’s meeting of the Coppell Parks and Recreation Board, Director of Community Experiences Jessica Carpenter said construction of the Magnolia Park Trail will begin in July. In March, the City Council approved a $1.5 million contract with J.B. & Co., the contractor that revitalized The Duck Pond Park. The trail project, which was long delayed due to a historical antiquities survey, will be paid for with American Rescue Plan Act funds.
• The Coppell ISD Board of Trustees will get together for another budget workshop at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, but they will not occupy their usual seats in the Vonita White Administration Building. The board room is being renovated this summer, so this will be the first of at least four meetings held in the Large Group Instruction Room at Coppell Middle School West.
• In April, I reported that the former home of Ms. Mary’s Southern Kitchen would soon be known as the Double Yoke Cafe, based on a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission notice taped to a window of the building on Denton Tap Road. Last Monday morning, I noticed a “Stop Work Order” dated May 2 had been taped to the front door. City spokesperson Hannah Cook told me the contractor failed to obtain a permit before starting renovations.
• Last month, I reported that John Votava, Kroger’s corporate affairs director, told me construction of the fuel station on the southeast corner of the grocery chain’s Coppell parking lot would start after Labor Day. He must have meant to say Memorial Day, because the work has begun.
• Last November, I reported that a basketball-centric business called PickUp USA Fitness had been locked out of its facility at the west end of Sandy Lake Road. That space reopened in May under a new name: Ellis Elite Basketball Academy. Its namesake is former Dallas Mavericks guard Monta Ellis.
• Kebab Uncle, a tiny restaurant at Sandy Lake and Moore roads, has expanded by opening a second location in Plano. The Dallas Observer has more details.
• MN8 Energy, a New York-based renewable energy firm that was spun off from Goldman Sachs, plans to spend $3.5 million on an office suite in Cypress Waters. A form filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation says the suite on Olympus Boulevard will include a “command center.” Fancy!
• Another form filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation says Kite Realty Group is going to spend $250,000 on a “major interior renovation” of the Starbucks at Denton Tap and Sandy Lake roads this fall.
• Coppell-based Takis is about to release a “Cobra” flavor of its rolled tortilla chips. “Embracing the fiery intensity of a cobra,” a press release says, “this spicy Worcestershire sauce-flavored chip features a powerful strike of flavor rolled into each and every bite.” I was hoping the press release would address whether or not these snacks include bits of real snakes. No such luck.
(See “Takis Take Coppell’s Name Nationwide” in Vol. 1, No. 31.)
Community Calendar
Lucy: I’ve heard of K-pop, but Lucy is the first Korean act I’ve seen described as K-rock. Their world tour includes a stop at the Coppell Arts Center at 7 p.m. today.
Decades Trivia Night: Celebrate the Cozby Library’s 50th anniversary by participating in a contest regarding pop culture, music, literature, and more from the last five decades. The questions begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday.
Four Day Weekend: The acclaimed improv comedy troupe may have lost their lease in Fort Worth, but their monthly residency at the Coppell Arts Center will resume at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday.
Big Fish: Theatre Coppell will stage six more performances of the musical about a traveling salesman who lives life to the fullest. The next show is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Friday at the Coppell Arts Center.
James Wand Magic Show: The Friends of the Coppell Public Library are bringing the magician to the Cozby Library and Community Commons for an all-ages show at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets are free, but seating is limited.
Dallas Black Dance Theatre: The oldest, continuously operating professional dance company in Dallas will perform at 8 p.m. on June 22 at the Coppell Arts Center.
Let’s Draw With Gale Galligan: The Friends of the Coppell Public Library are bringing the best-selling cartoonist to the Cozby Library and Community Commons for three workshops on June 29. Tickets are free, but each workshop will be limited to 50 participants.
Great reporting! Again!!
MJS
Great reporting. I’m wondering if the barricades in the parking lot of the Kroger on Sandy Lake and MacArthur mean they’re starting on the gas station. Hope so!