(Photos by Alex Richter/Courtesy of. Highland Park)

Mike Pressler calls it “the juice inside the rectangle.”

That juice has never wavered, even with all the other noise. It never wavered through the tumultuous end at Duke, through a norovirus outbreak in 2016 at Bryant, through COVID and a new host of challenges in a changing college landscape — the transfer portal, NIL, decommitments and more.

But in that rectangle, all is right.

“I enjoy the juice in the rectangle. I really do. I mean, the coaching part of it,” says Mike Pressler. “That has never waned for me. Getting the team together, the actual Xs and Os, the teaching of the fundamentals. I truly believe I can really, really make an impact on this game in this age group in particular.”

Pressler retired from college coaching last summer with the eighth-most wins of all-time at 382. It was all he ever knew, starting the program at VMI when he was 23 years old, to Army and Ohio Wesleyan, to Duke and Bryant.

“Retired” is a misnomer, as he left some of the noise of college coaching for Highland Park in Dallas, and most recently was named head coach of Atlas LC in PLL.

While it may have come as a shock at the time, it all adds up. One of his daughters moved to Richardson, Texas, and she had Pressler’s grandson in the hall. He’d been traveling to Texas for about 15 years to visit friends and alums from his programs, and he already had a trip planned there when he found out about the opportunity at Highland Park last summer. He’s a football guy at heart, so being a part of the Texas football culture — most of his players are from the gridiron — was a draw. And Bryant, with his former player Brad Ross leading the way, is in good hands.

Don’t expect Pressler, 62, to look at it as a downgrade; that’s just not how he does things.

“You're gonna dial it up, I'm not gonna dial it down,” he told his players. “So, in many ways, I'm still coaching these kids like I have in in the Division I days. There are certain concepts and certain things that we’ve got to change, we do the fundamentals a lot more than you do as a as a college coach. But the preparation, the professional approach to communication, that doesn’t change.”

Highland Park is north of downtown Dallas. It is football country, and the Scots are at the pinnacle of that. Randy Allen, their football coach, is the winningest coach in Texas history. Their games attract thousands of fans, and they’ve won six state titles.

The lacrosse program runs as a private organization because the sport is not sanctioned by the state. It has won 11 state championships — the last came in 2018 — and graduated dozens of college players. The high school program is a member of the Texas High School Lacrosse League and competes in three subdivisions. Pressler is the leader of a major organization of staff members, teams from bantam (1st-4th grade), youth (5th-8th) and high school age groups. There are 400 players in the program and 11 coaches across the high school teams. He coaches the DI varsity “Blue” team, in addition to his organizational duties.

He has never coached high school before.

“My mission is kind of to tie the entire club together,” says Pressler. “So it's just not a silo for me, it's not Blue only. I try to keep involved in all those programs and help and support as much as needed.”

There is college DI talent throughout his program.

Ben Abel is a Loyola commit. Pressler says, “I haven’t seen everyone in the state yet, but I can’t imagine there’s a better goalie.”

Wesley Iverson and Quinn Gordon are captains and highly athletic two-way midfielders. Senior face-off specialist Frank Mousa is committed to Quinnipiac to play for one of Pressler’s former Bryant players in Mason Poli. Sophomore Ben Boyer is a stud defenseman who is already on the national radar and might be the team’s best player.

Parker Addison at attack and sophomore midfielder Paxton Smith are offensive standouts, and defensively juniors Donovan Riley and Henry Richter are “big, physical, Texas-type defensemen.”

They’ve started 5-0, picking up wins at Memorial and The Woodlands to open March.

It’s a 27-man roster, about half of what he’s used to at Bryant. But he’s finding joy in the newness and purity of coaching this age. One thing he's enjoying is being on the other side of the recruiting conversation — being an advocate for the kids and reaching out to his former colleagues and opponents in college. He’s going to coach summer club, too, something he also hadn’t done before.

“I really, really like this age group for me. I can kind of dive back to the old days a little bit. And really challenge the youth of these high school kids and the maturity and growing up and all the challenges they face as a young adult and be involved in their lives,” says Pressler.

Pressler has an apartment in Highland Park right near the campus; when he was at Bryant —in the house that coach Ross and his family now live — he could hear the national anthem he was so close to the stadium. Pressler watches Bryant and cheers on from afar, complimenting Ross’ tweaks to the team, taking pride in the shape he left the program and the leader that has taken over.

He also has a ranch about an hour-and-40-minutes Southwest of Dallas in Meridian. Pressler says the only thing man-made you can hear there is the occasional sound of the train.

It’s not retirement, though, as much as the search for something pure in his favorite place: inside that rectangle. He’s not sure if it’s eight, nine, 10 or more years he’ll be doing this — but it will be a while. He’ll coach his grandson, one day, he says.

“The transfer portal. What’s going on with the NLI. You know, I grew up in an era where you shook a man's hand, you gave your word, you’re committed. That word is a waste these days. It's a word that shouldn't be used, because it isn’t really committed if you're only loyal today when it's convenient. And so I think, philosophically, that was getting old for me. And I was ready for something else,” says Pressler. “You know, the recruiting grind, the summer grind, I always said to myself when the recruiting was getting to be a chore and you weren't as engaged and as excited about it as you should be, that's the time to get out.

“I'm really looking forward to being busy coaching. I call it in the rectangle, in the box, that's the greatest joy in my life is those practice fields. And I don't care, I have just as much fun coaching these HP kids as I did the Bryant team, as I did the Duke team, the Washington and Lee team, Team USA twice. It didn't matter to me, it was always, give us 20-30 players give us some equipment a bucket of balls and let's go figure this out.”

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Shopping and browsing in Dallas-Fort Worth gets more interesting all the time.

New stores prop up the region’s reputation as a destination for finding the latest retail concepts. Krigler, a luxury perfumery, opened a shop in Uptown Dallas’ Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Big national brands are still filling in the market. Burlington just opened its 19th D-FW store in Prestonwood Town Center in North Dallas.

California-based Green Acres Nursery & Supply chose Irving for its first Texas store. The family-owned and -operated business with Dallas ties has plans for four more stores.

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Arhaus The Loft

If furniture retail is your passion, there’s a big one coming soon to Grapevine Mills. Arhaus The Loft will fill a gap in the mall’s directory for furniture. The store will be the first Arhaus outlet store in Texas and will sell out-of-season looks, special order returns, overstock merchandise, new-in-box and other items. The mall didn’t have an exact opening date.

Arhaus, a chain of 80 stores based in Boston Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, had sales last year of $1.23 billion, a whopping 54% increase from 2021. Arhaus attributed the gain to higher consumer demand both in its stores and online and to supply chain improvements that allowed it to clear out its backlog. Yes, that’s how awful supply chain woes were for the furniture business.

Want to check out Arhaus before the outlet store opens?

Arhaus stores are at NorthPark Center in Dallas and The Shops at Clearfork in Fort Worth. Three stores are in the Houston market, and one is located in Austin.

Meow Wolf

Grapevine Mills, known both for shopping and entertainment venues, has another big pending opening, Meow Wolf. The immersive arts and entertainment venue is expected to open this summer.

Moncler

Outerwear brand Moncler opens Friday at Highland Park Village.

The brand, whose motto is “born in the mountains, living in the city,” is based in Milan, Italy, but it was founded in 1952 in a mountain village near Grenoble, France.

Moncler is known for its luxury down products made of high-performance materials and bringing style, such as vibrant metallic colors, to its puffy jackets and other outerwear. While the website included children’s gear, the store will only stock men’s and women’s. Moncler is also sold at Neiman Marcus.

There is no word yet on what’s going into the former Ralph Lauren space. You can find the American fashion label in the Village Theater space.

Stitch Golf

Stitch Golf opened late last year and bills itself as a vintage-inspired golf brand. It sells golf clothing, bags and some entertaining and nostalgic head and putter covers.

Bassett Furniture

Remember when Bassett Furniture left its longtime location just south of Knox Street on McKinney? It has reopened at Inwood next to Ulta Beauty and Trader Joe’s in a prime spot facing Lovers Lane. The space it vacated on 4528 McKinney Ave. with on-site parking is still empty.

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream opened its third shop last month at Inwood. Two other locations are in West Village and Fort Worth’s WestBend. The brand, which started out in 2008 as a New York City food truck, makes both vegan and French-style ice cream with more than twice as much egg yolk as standard ice cream. Van Leeuwen pints are also sold at Sprouts Farmers Market, Walmart and H-E-B.

Boardroom Styling Lounge

Southlake-based Boardroom Salon for Men is remodeling and rebranding its 45 locations in multiple states to Boardroom Styling Lounge and the first one completed is at Inwood. The interior design mixes leather and denim with white and black. Some exterior features will include a barber pole.

“We chose the descriptor ‘Styling Lounge’ because it embodies the relaxed experience our clients enjoy when they walk through the door and unwind in a comfortable chair with a drink in their hand,” said Josh Goodell, CEO of Boardroom Styling Lounge. “Our goal is to provide The Boardroom Experience to everyone who walks through our doors so each person leaves feeling as great as they look.”

Bachendorf’s

Bachendorf’s Jewelers, a Galleria mainstay, is expanding. During construction, the store moved to a temporary location on level one next to Gucci. The expansion is expected to be completed this summer.

Mango

Galleria will have the first local Mango in the market when Spain’s men’s and women’s fashion apparel retailer opens sometime this fall.

Intimissimi

Intimissimi, a women’s intimates and clothing store, the first in Texas for the Italian brand, will open this spring on level one across from Sephora.

Tippy Tot Shoes

Tippy Tot Shoes, an upscale brand for toddlers, is open on level three near Auntie Anne’s.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias

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Dallas’ newest bar, Coupes, is an ode to champagne and an homage to dinner parties at a friend’s house.

The champagne-centric lounge will open in The Shops of Highland Park in late December with 50 or so champagnes and Texas sparkling wines by the bottle and 15 by the glass, and a France-meets-Texas food menu.

The elegant champagne bar is the manifested dream of Eric Chiappinelli and Amanda Hale — a champagne-obsessed couple and first-time restaurant and bar owners. Chiappinelli is a professor at Texas Tech University School of Law and Hale is an oil and gas attorney at a law firm based in Fort Worth.

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Champagne has long been a hobby for Chiappinelli, who approaches the subject with academic rigor as both student and educator. He introduced Hale to his love of the French wine, and now the two travel with champagne bars and wineries as destinations.

“There are about 10 or a dozen true champagne bars in the country, and we’ve been to pretty much all of them. There are lots of places that have champagne, but they’ll have a couple [varieties], and they’re the same ones you’ve had or they’re not so good. So it’s really hard to find a place with a nice by-the-glass or even bottle list,” Chiappinelli said.

The idea of opening their own champagne bar took root five years ago as a daydream, but they couldn’t shake the thought. They imagined a Dallas bar where they could host people like they do at their own dinner parties, where they host food and champagne pairings and banter on art and culture. They envisioned a place where champagne enthusiasts like themselves could experience familiar and perhaps unfamiliar bottles, and where even non champagne drinkers would feel equally as comfortable.

Take a look inside Coupes champagne bar opening in Highland Park

11 images

When a mens’ clothing store moved out of a retail space along Oak Lawn Avenue a few doors down from Mediterranean restaurant Sachet, Chiappinelli and Hale jumped on the opportunity. With the help of Coeval Studios and interior designer Autumn Cooper, they slowly transformed the space into a spacious but intimate bar with echoes of Parisian design and pieces of art from Chiappinelli’s own collection.

The bar’s tiled corner entrance is a nod to the cafés of Paris. Velvet couches around low tables are meant to give guests the feeling of sipping drinks in a friend’s living room. The curved bar that anchors the room is centered around a circular ice trough, and custom tables in the booth seating have built-in ice buckets for chilling. The playlist of French pop and glam rock was carefully pieced together by Hale. At every point of the design process, Chiappinelli and Hale said they were guided by their travels and their goal of creating an environment where guests feel like they’re at a cocktail party.

Chef Bruno Davaillon of Knox Bistro consulted on the bar’s food menu, which was then further shaped by Coupes’ chef de cuisine Daniel Griffeth, who previously worked in the kitchens of Harper’s, Five Sixty by Wolfgang Puck and Paradiso.

Griffeth wanted the menu to effortlessly accompany the champagne while incorporating unexpected interpretations of familiar classics like a caviar blini made with buckwheat and potato, crispy fried chicken served with an herbes de Provence ranch, and gougères filled with a gruyère and parmesan foam.

In addition to champagne, the bar will also offer a cocktail menu. What it won’t offer are reservations (except for certain occasions like New Year’s Eve). Hale and Chiappinelli want Coupes to be an accessible place where people can stop by for a drink before dinner or after dinner, celebrate something big or small, and learn something new about champagne.

“We hope to impart some of the knowledge we have about champagne on our patrons. We want them to love it as much as we do, and hopefully by having such a beautiful space it will be welcoming for people to come learn about it and come have a glass,” Hale said.

Coupes is located at 4234 Oak Lawn Ave, Dallas. It will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 4 p.m. “until nécessaire,” Chiappinelli said. coupesdallas.com.

Recently launched champagne bar Coupes in Highland Park is a passion project in its purest form: It’s owners aim to educate rather than grow and expand. “We want a place where people who are curious about champagne can come,” co-owner Eric Chiappinelli says of the concept, named for a type of stemmed champagne glass. “We had a great time doing [the first venue]. It’s not that we’ve had a bad experience, but we don’t want to do it again.”

The new spot inside The Shops at Oak Lawn was born when Chiappinelli, who is a full-time law professor at Texas Tech, and his partner, Amanda Hale, an oil and gas attorney at Dallas-based Hamilton Squibb & Shores, learned their favorite champagne bar in Chicago had sold in 2019. They realized they wished they would have known as they may have tried to buy it themselves. “Then we started thinking ‘If we can’t buy a champagne bar, could we start one?’” Chiappinelli says.

The duo decided Dallas made the most sense, as Hale is based in Fort Worth and Chiappinelli commutes to his home in North Texas from Lubbock weekly.

Chiappinelli has long been a champagne enthusiast, turning to the bubbly drink for its consistent quality across growing years: because champagne ages in the bottle, rather than in a barrel, he says there is less variety in taste from year to year. He passed his passion on to Hale, who is a confessed Francophile. “I love the French culture to begin with,” she says, “and once you get to know a little bit of the history behind these [champagne] houses and how old and how historic they are in so many ways, I love that part of it too.”

The pair had originally wanted to open Coupes in the Design District. They looked for two years for the perfect space, but found themselves bumping up against strict parking regulations and reluctant landlords trying to avoid taking on a bar concept. “One day we had a terrific agent who said, ‘Come and look in Highland Park,’” Chiappinelli says. They decided on the 4,058-square foot space on Oak Lawn Avenue, which will seat 80.

Designed by Coeval Studios and North Texas designer Autumn Cooper, the space is laid out with large banquettes and booths surrounding a central U-shaped bar to encourage several midsize to large groupings. Hale and Chiappinelli say they were going for a very welcoming and social atmosphere, without being a “party place.”

Coupes’ decor wound up mirroring Chiappinelli’s home in many ways, even incorporating some art pieces from his personal collection. “Once [our designer] saw what Eric had, it was just like, ‘Go to Lubbock in your car and bring it all back!’” Hale laughs.

In addition to roughly 15 true French champagne varietals offered by the glass and 50 by the bottle or half bottle, Coupes will serve a wine program that showcases varietals from Texas and France. “We’re trying to find comparable French and Texas offerings that would be good for anybody,” Hale says. It will also feature French sparklings, often offered at a more approachable price point than a true champagne.

A menu highlight will be a drink named after T.V. Munson, who helped French grape expert Pierre Viala find vines that would be resistant to an aphid that was destroying French grapes at the time. Munson was based in Dennison, Texas, but he led Viala to a varietal from Bell County that would meet his needs. “They crossbred it,” Chiappinelli says, “and today, 80 percent of the vineyards in Champagne are grown on this Texas hybrid.”

The pairing menu is curated with the help of Bruno Davaillon, the chef behind The Mansion and Bullion, and a partner with Stephan Courseau of Travis Street Hospitality. “Bruno turned out to be a friend of a friend,” Chiappinelli says.

When Davaillon heard what Chiappinelli had planned for Coupes, he was excited, agreed to consult on the opening menu, and connected Chiappinelli and Hale with their full-time chef, Daniel Griffeth. “He used to work with Wolfgang Puck at the revolving restaurant,” Chiappinelli says.

Menu highlights include cheeses and charcuterie, as well as Gruyere Gougéres, a French pastry made with cream puff dough and stuffed with cheese. Other dishes include a Foie Gras (Foie gras ganache, pear nasturtium geleé, pear compote, pickled mustard seed, and sourdough), boneless fried chicken seasoned with herbs de Provence, and Mushroom Chaudree (King Oyster mushroom chowder with truffle cream and torn croutons).

“We want to keep the menu approachable,” Chiappinelli says.

When Adam Saxton and Dan Murphy, who own a nearly 100-year-old home on Beverly Drive, started looking for a home for their family, they weren’t necessarily looking for a historic preservation or renovation project. They wanted a family home that felt distinctly theirs, Murphy said.

They were looking for a sense of community, too, Saxton noted, in a neighborhood with “almost a suburban feel in the big city.” It was this desire for community that drew them to Highland Park and, ultimately, to this home on Beverly Drive.

“From the moment we both got there, we knew that property was perfect for what we were looking for,” Murphy said.

Deciding to purchase the home was a simple decision, Saxton said, and they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Next began a seven-plus-month planning process to prepare for the beginning of construction in August.

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“We fell in love with the idea of reimagining this beautiful, old home on an iconic Dallas street,” Saxton said. “We wanted to take that project on and do it our way while preserving all the things about it that people love about that house and houses like it in Highland Park.”

The home was originally built in 1930, according to the property records, though Saxton and Murphy found an old advertisement for the home that indicates it may have been built in 1929. They also discovered that a photo of the home was included in Great American Suburbs: The Homes of the Park Cities, Dallas with a note that the architect was not known, Murphy said.

The couple began sharing the renovation process on social media over the summer, a few months after they purchased the home and just before construction began. Their goal was simply to share the process with extended family and friends, Murphy said. They were surprised by the community’s interest in the home, Saxton said.

Their home, which they have named the “Beverly Casa,” and the renovation project have garnered interest from people in the community. People in the neighborhood reached out, Murphy said, to say that they knew about the house because they knew previous residents or had previously lived there. They even brought a previous resident — who had lived in the home “from 1965 to the early 80s” — to see the property, Murphy said. Based on that feedback, Saxton and Murphy were able to piece together design changes that happened over time.

“The enthusiasm of the community was contagious,” Saxton said.

Saxton said they fell in love with the home’s design — the front facade, the elegant feel and the historic qualities — but knew that the home’s interior configuration and size would not work for their family’s needs.

They are adding around 3,000 square feet of space to the existing home and working to maintain its historical integrity, sourcing materials carefully. Murphy said the exterior brick selected for the new portion of the house will be sourced from the same quarry as the brick in the original portion of the house. The new addition will include what Saxton referred to as “the things that have changed the most about living in the hundred years since the house was built,” like a large, open kitchen, a family room and a large primary suite with spacious closets.

The couple enlisted the help of Dallas architect William S. Briggs for the renovation. Briggs said that preserving and renovating a home like this requires acknowledging its history and bringing forth a new design that is current and enduring, with attention to scale and alignment of spaces. Briggs was previously a board member for the Park Cities Historic and Preservation Society (now known as Preservation Park Cities) and remains an active member, he said.

“This house is like finding gold,” Briggs said. His goal with this project was to imagine the newer portion as though it has been designed with “the same hand or the same eye” as the original part of the home.

Speaking of Saxton and Murphy’s effort to preserve the home and share the renovation and preservation story online, Briggs said that the project benefits the larger community.

“What they’ve done, one, by saving the house is, in effect, a gift to the community,” Briggs said. “But also they’ve pulled the community together and amplified the interest in saving houses like this.”

Construction on the home began last month, and Saxton and Murphy said in an email that the anticipated completion date for the project is around Thanksgiving 2023. As the project progresses, they are drawing inspiration from the community by asking for help in choosing design elements, like the front door or kitchen sink — and sharing progress as they make selections. Their original quest to find a home in an engaged community proved quite fruitful.

To keep up with the Beverly Casa story, follow the project on Instagram.

This is part of our Posh Properties series, providing a glimpse inside nice homes in North Texas for those who love to look at houses. It is not paid for or presented by area real estate agents or companies.

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