Twenty Peaceful Minutes

The Richardson Jaycees will be hosting a Kid’s Fun Day this Friday, July 4th, from 11AM to 4PM at the Forney Brookshire’s located at 427 Pinson Road. The event will include kid friendly games, face painting and more. Raffle tickets will be sold with prizes including an iPod Shuffle, a Nintendo DS, a DVD player and much more!

Proceeds from the event will go towards the Hannah Kessner fund, the fund that has been setup at a bank here in Forney to help with the medical costs involved with the operation that 4 year old Hannah needs to correct a congential defect in the area where her spinal cord and brain connects. Read more about Hannah’s condition in this story about the fundraiser that was held at Chick-Fil-A for the Kessner family.

A flyer with details about the Kid’s Fun Day is available to download as a PDF; feel free to print it out and distribute it in your office, to your neighbors, etc!

• Help Hannah - Fund Raiser at Chick-Fil-A For 4 Year Old With Chiari Malformation
• Bake Sale and Chick-Fil-A Fundraiser for Hannah Kessner Saturday May 31st
• Help Hannah Bake Sale A Huge Success Thanks To You!

The Girl Scouts of the United States has long been an organization devoted to empowering girls to become the best they can be - one of the ways girls in Scouts can grow and achieve their goals and dreams is through service to the community.

Forney’s local Girl Scout Service Unit is in the process of planning for their upcoming year. The theme for the year is “Change the World” and the Scouts plan to begin by changing the world right here in Forney. With over 150 girls and dozens of adults eager to get started, they are are looking forward to helping as many organizations and people in Forney as possible, however, they need our help!

They have asked me to put out a request to the Forney community to help them find ways to serve - if you know of any service projects they can get involved with in our community this year, please contact Melanie Davis (mdavis@feccommunications.net) or Jill Culmo (jculmo@flash.net).

Feel free to brainstorm potential projects to recommend to them in this thread in the Forney discussion forum, as well!

• Help Hannah Bake Sale A Huge Success Thanks To You!
• Chase Bank, Jiffy Lube Coming to Forney
• Listen to Forney High School Football Games Online!

According to a recent update to the City of Forney website, the annual Independence Day Firework display will be on Thursday, July 3, at approximately 9:15 PM from the undeveloped property in the Villages of Fox Hollow. Parking is allowed at Forney High School and in the rear parking lot of the First Baptist Church.

We’ve attended this display in the past - it’s a lot of fun, but I do encourage you to get there early - we parked in the parking lot at Forney High School and by the time the show started, it was packed! It was a great atmosphere, though, with some people watching the show from their vehicle while others brought lawn chairs and a few enterprising teens were even selling glow sticks and other items. The annual Independence Day Fireworks are a great way to get out, meet some of your fellow Forney residents and enjoy a great fireworks display without the risk that comes with shooting off fireworks yourself. (Read on …)

• Brooklyn Crossing MUD Blindsides Local Officials; City of Dallas Approves Development Along FM-548
• New School Names Announced; Dallas Morning News Article on Forney
• Are You Registered to Vote? Kaufman County Tax Office Gets Inundated with Registrar Applicants

OLDnFEEBLE, an area blogger, posted something recently that caught my attention, especially given recent heated discussion on the Forney discussion forum here on 20PM entitled ‘Plan to Build Toll road on Helms Trail from I20 to 80‘. From the article on ONF’s blog ‘A Seat At The Table?‘:

An article in today’s Dallas Morning News informs us of what would appear to be one of those really, really important meetings of regional representatives on vital transportation issues.

Drilling down into that article’s link to the North Central [Texas] Council of Government’s Regional Transportation Council membership appears to reveal that there is NO representative from Kaufman County or any city in Kaufman County on this council.

Research shows that while there are forty members on the Regional Transportation Council (RTC), including a county judge from Johnson County and a county commissioner from Ellis County, two counties that are of a similar size as Kaufman County, Kaufman County is completely unrepresented on the RTC.

Why should we care about a committee of 40 elected and appointed officials that meets monthly in Arlington to talk about roads that may not be built for 20 years? It’s simple - the RTC is the major planning group that guides the alignment of new roads in the Metroplex; they can align a toll-road along a small street like Helms Trail and knock out hundreds of homes, and on the other extreme, they can decide to completely bypass a city when routing major thoroughfares that have the potential to bring growth, development and increased tax revenue.

(Read on …)

• New Video and Maps Regarding Regional Shopping Center Planned for Forney
• Forney Regional Shopping Center Updates
• 2.2 Million Square Foot Regional Shopping Center Announced in Forney

The City of Seagoville, in partnership with the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office announced the conclusion of a joint two-week investigation that led to the arrest of 6 adults and 1 juvenile as well as the recovery of 670 individual tablets of Ecstasy, a popular street drug. The arrests ranged over 4 counties, with the capture of suspects from Kaufman, Dallas, Tarrant and Henderson counties. Narcotics investigators involved in the case have said they are seeing a rise in ecstasy use by local youth and would like to remind parents and their children that ecstasy is a dangerous stimulant that often proves to be fatal.

From what I can discern, none of the arrests were tied to any activity in Forney, however, I know that many Forney parents are concerned about what drugs might be available in our area and how to keep their children safe, so read on for more information about this case, drug use in Kaufman County and photos of the suspects as well as of ecstasy itself.

(Read on …)

• Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office Recovers Nearly $150,000 in Stolen Property
• Peace Officer’s Memorial Day Ceremony Thursday, May 15th
• Sheriff’s Office Shuts Down Vehicle Burglary Ring

Christy recently posted some information in the Forney discussion forums here on 20PM that I want to share with everyone - there will be a car show on Sunday, June 29th to benefit Laurren Smith, a 12 year old from Forney who was diagnosed with bone cancer (osteosarcoma) in August of 2007 and has undergone chemotherapy, several operations and continues to fight hard against this difficult cancer.

Read on for more about Laurren as well as the car show!

(Read on …)

• Overtime Sports Cafe & Stepping For a Cure Holding a Silent Auction to Benefit Breast Cancer Research & Awareness
• Help Hannah Bake Sale A Huge Success Thanks To You!
• Memorial for Chynna Zmolik, Forney High School Student, This Wednesday at 1:30PM

I just wanted to take a second to thank everyone involved in the Help Hannah Bake Sale - from the individuals who organized the bake sale to the people who attended the Celebration of Youth Sports on May 31st and stopped by the bake sale booth to purchase some of the delicious baked goods as well as our Forney Brookshire’s, who graciously donated many of the dry goods used in the bake sale.

Thanks to everyone involved, this bake sale - which was organized by some very dedicated volunteers in less than 10 days - raised over $1,100 to support Hannah’s family as they work to find a way to pay for the surgery this precious four year old girl needs to correct a painful, debilitating congenital birth defect.

(Read on …)

• Bake Sale and Chick-Fil-A Fundraiser for Hannah Kessner Saturday May 31st
• Help Hannah - Fund Raiser at Chick-Fil-A For 4 Year Old With Chiari Malformation
• Welcome to our blog!

We originally broke the news of the 2.2 million square foot regional shopping center planned for Forney back on May 5th, with an update, including a video of the bridge that will be built over Highway 80 between CR-212 and Windmill Farms Blvd to connect to this shopping center, on May 6th.

There’s a number of exciting updates about this project to share, but first, our research has uncovered a new map of the planned shopping center, which is shown below. Click the map to a view a (much) larger version. This map gives us, via the diagram at the bottom left, a better idea of which portions of the shopping center will be in each of the three phases.

This map makes it clear that Endeavor wants to make a bold statement with the first phase of the center, with two of the four department stores being built in phase 1, which is scheduled to open in 2010. In addition to the two department stores and numerous other buildings, phase 1 also includes a 130,000 square foot building for a major anchor. 130,000 square feet is big - roughly the size of a Lowe’s, Home Depot or Target, to name a few major retailers that could occupy a building that large. Of course, with groundbreaking set to occur in 2009 and grand openings in 2010, it’s too soon to know for sure what retailers might occupy any of these spaces, but stay tuned to 20PM, where we’ll keep you up to date with the latest news about this and all the other new developments in Forney. For more information and news about this shopping center and the offices and hotels that are proposed for the area surrounding it, click ‘Read On’, below.

(Read on …)

• 2.2 Million Square Foot Regional Shopping Center Announced in Forney
• Place LeGrand
• Terrell Market Center Updates

Steve Silver, president of Forney-based Steve Silver Co., will participate in the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China this August as the team leader of the U.S. Olympic Freestyle Wrestling Team. Silver, who participated in wrestling in high school and then in college at the University of Alabama, won’t be wrestling - team leader is a position akin to a manager or coordinator. In addition to walking into the Olympic Stadium with the U.S. freestyle team, Silver will be responsible for ensuring the wrestlers are weighed in, managing the movement of the team throughout the Olympic Village and coordinating other team activities and events.

(Read on …)

• Forney North High School Groundbreaking Ceremony This Monday
• Forney High School #2 Virtual Tour & Sketches Available
• New School Names Announced; Dallas Morning News Article on Forney

Just a quick reminder that the bake sale to benefit Hannah Kessner, the 4 year old suffering from Chari malformation, a congenital birth defect, will be tomorrow, Saturday, May 31st from 2PM to 8PM. The bake sale booth will be at the Celebration of Youth Sports, which will be in the parking lot east of Lowe’s, behind NTB and AutoZone.

In addition, make sure to stop by Chick-Fil-A in Forney all day Saturday and ask that your receipt be marked for the Hannah Kessner fundraiser as Chick-Fil-A will be donating a portion from all of the receipts marked for Hannah on Saturday.

I hope to see many of you at the bake sale, which many 20PM/Forney discussion forum members and their friends and family have been working very hard to put together. There’s going to be a lot of great baked goods in addition to raffles (I believe I’ve seen mention of a Coach purse as well as a couple of iPods, in addition to other items as potential raffle prizes!), cake walks and more - it should be a lot of fun!

• Help Hannah Bake Sale A Huge Success Thanks To You!
• Help Hannah - Fund Raiser at Chick-Fil-A For 4 Year Old With Chiari Malformation
• Jaycees Hosting Kid’s Fun Day July 4th to Benefit Hannah Kessner