Just your typical, everyday $60 million high school football stadium
Apr 15, 2010, 11:30 AM EDT
Yep, this is a high school football stadium; now under construction in Alllen, Texas. (Hank Hill approves). I won’t bore you with comments about how my high school could only afford to mark half of our football field (“He’s at the 40! He’s at the 50! He’s … where the hell is he?”), but I will say this. As a 49ers fan, I am really pissed off and envious. The stadium you see here (Allen is a suburb of Dallas) will have 18,000 seats, two decks, a video scoreboard, four concession stands and 12 restrooms. About 5,000 of those seats will be sold as season tickets. It’s scheduled to open in the fall of 2012.
Pfft. No retractable roof?
Some fun facts about the school: Allen has 3,900 students, is the only high school in its district, and last year won the Division 5A football title. Allen is 67-12 since 2004, according to Rivals.com. The Dallas Cowboys have 53 wins over that same span. Also, Allen played a game at Texas Stadium last season before 50,000 fans. From Rivals:
But before you start throwing out stereotypes that Texans care more about touchdowns than textbooks, understand this:
* The stadium was part of a larger $120 million bond package passed in May 2009 that included nearly as much money for a state-of-the-art auditorium for performing arts;
* The town approved a bond package of $219 million in November 2008 that called for the building of two new elementary schools, the purchase of 45 school buses and improvements to many of the other elementary and middle schools in the district;
* The money for the project could only be used on capital expenses not general education;
The facility will replace Allen’s existing stadium, built in the late 70s when the suburb — located 25 miles north of Dallas — was much smaller. In the past few decades, the area has seen amazing growth.
The plans for that new performing arts center must be a thing to behold. Mr. G would have an aneurysm.
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Texas school set to begin work on $60m stadium [Rivals.com]
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- Jack Meoffer - Apr 15, 2010 at 3:17 PM
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Wasteful !
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- Mark Anderson - Apr 15, 2010 at 3:21 PM
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Further proof the best thing to come out of Texas is an empty bus
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- DFW Bro - Apr 15, 2010 at 3:32 PM
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hey.. we can afford it.. nuff said..
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- RedRiver - Apr 15, 2010 at 3:33 PM
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In response to the fella playing with a midget dill pickle, Jack:
Outstanding plans! The community has always been about the students first, and this proves it. This is a great environment to live and grow up in. The auditorium will continue to foster liberal art growth in the district, and the stadium will be another fine example of community chemistry.
Quit complaining about progress.
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- LewP - Apr 15, 2010 at 7:07 PM
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I live about 50 miles from Allen. It is quickly becoming the fastest growing city in the area. Mostly mostly upper-middle class folks that got out of Dallas when the minorities became the majorities.
“* The money for the project could only be used on capital expenses not general education;’
Here’s why
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_plan
Texas used to be a leader in education. Now, Texas is at the rear of the pack when it comes to quality education. Too many times we just educate our chikldren to take the TAKS Test.
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index3.aspx?id=3839&menu_id=793
We put more emphasis on football in Texas because no one can seem to fix the education part of the system. For those families that feel education is more important than football, they usually enroll in some private school and the athlete part of the student gets lost forever.
Congrats Allen ISD. I hope you folks enjoy your stadium. Now, can the kids read and write?
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- Mark From Dallas - Apr 15, 2010 at 7:17 PM
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Wow!! It’s nice to see all the haters in here. They have the money to do it. Why would you even care . Jealous maybe? Yeah you are.
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- Tim - Apr 16, 2010 at 10:39 AM
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A few facts to ponder about Allen High School..
- The school has 5,100 students in 4 grades (3,900 in grades 10-12)
- Allen is the fourth largest high school in Texas. Two other high schools in the Allen district (it is not a one high school district!) are larger. They are Plano High School and Plano East. These two teams play in the 16,000 Clark Stadium which was built in 1978 I believe.
- The new stadium is Allen would be the 5th largest in Texas with larger ones in Mesquite, San Antonio and the Austin area.
- The new stadium does not have two decks. It is a single level stadium with a walkway that divides the two parts. There is no upper deck as mentioned in the blog.
- Attendance at Allen High School football games runs about 12,000 – 14,000 at the current time in a stadium built for 7,000. There are then 7,000 portable bleachers to accomodate the overflow.
- last November, 50,000 fans saw Allen High School play Southlake Carroll HS play in a playoff game at Cowboy Stadium
Yes – football is big in Texas and perceived as ridiculous by everyone else but put things in perspective. High schools in the northeast and midwest are much smaller so it is hard to imagine a community filling a stadium of this size. It happens every week in Texas.
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- Tim Carroll - Apr 16, 2010 at 10:49 AM
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LewP comments – can the kids in Allen read?
The answer would be that they do more than just read. The district is one of the top school districts in Texas. Fifteen of the 20 campuses are rated Exemplary by the state which is the highest. Four more have Recognized status.
Here are the standardized test reading scores for all of Allen’s 18,000 students this past year: Grade 1-96, Grade 2-99, Grade 3-100, Grade 4 – 98, Grade 5 – 99, Grade 6 -100, Grade 8 – 95, Grade 10-98, Grade 11 -99. Two grades scored a perfect 100.
Sorry I sound defensive but athletic success and community support do not mean that Allen has stepped back from the role of educating children in the classroom as well.
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- old coach - Apr 16, 2010 at 2:47 PM
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Can we read? This past week in our Universtiy Interscholastic League District 8-5A competition we place first in Math,Number Sense,Calculator and Journalism. These teams will be traveling to Lubbock in two weeks for the regional competitions. We have multiple student presently enrolled in IVY LEAGUE Universities as well as Military Academies. Our Community is well educated, very supportive and wants what is best for all kids, not just those that can afford private schools. Why is this country so bent on every one having the same style of living. (spreading the wealth)
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- LewP - Apr 16, 2010 at 11:53 PM
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From the Dallas morning News::
The new Allen ISD Eagle Stadium will have two large scoreboards, a video screen and a sunken horseshoe design that includes 18,000 seats. It will have a wrestling workout room, an indoor golf hitting area, four large concession stands and six sets of restrooms.
But wait. What about the retractable roof?
People joked about that possibility for the new stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2012. That’s because Allen goes big with its athletic facilities, including its gym with a scoreboard that hangs from the ceiling and the AISD Activity Center, which has half a football field and a weight room that accommodates more than 200 athletes at once.
The Allen dome isn’t happening, but the $59.6 million football stadium will be a radical upgrade. The current Eagle Stadium, built in 1976, has permanent seating for 7,400 and can squeeze in about 14,000 with the addition of rented bleachers.
“We felt like with 18,000, not having enough seats wouldn’t happen more than once or twice,” Allen ISD athletic director Steve Williams said. “We didn’t feel like we’re getting a whole bunch of things that other schools aren’t getting.”
Allen’s stadium, with construction set to begin in September, won’t even be the largest school district-owned stadium in the area. Mesquite Memorial Stadium, built in 1977, holds 20,000, and Fort Worth ISD’s Farrington Field, built in 1939, holds 18,500.
With a plaza and a Wall of Honor, Eagle Stadium will have a little more panache than most. But although some people still envision high school stadiums as a slab of concrete topped with a set of aluminum bleachers, it hasn’t been that way for a long time. Virtually all the big-school stadiums built in the last five years, in places such as Lancaster, Dallas, Midlothian, Mansfield and Little Elm, have included video scoreboards and large pressboxes with areas for coaches, media and hospitality suites.
They are creeping closer to the look of college stadiums, but maybe that’s because high school football is creeping closer to the look of college football. More schools are building indoor practice facilities, and more teams are playing in games set up for television. Two years ago, Allen played in front of more than 20,000 fans three times during its run to a Class 5A Division I state title. Last year, Allen’s playoff loss to Southlake Carroll drew 40,000 fans to Cowboys Stadium.
That’s how big high school sports have become.
It’s not just football, either. In 2006 the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD near Houston opened the Berry Center, which included an 11,000-seat stadium and an 8,300-seat basketball arena. The Dallas ISD has the 7,500-seat Ellis Davis Fieldhouse, a facility that’s nicer than some college basketball arenas. It opened in 2005 with the 12,000-seat John E. Kincaide Stadium, which were part of the Dallas ISD’s first new multipurpose athletic facility in four decades.
Four decades from now, the Allen ISD expects its new stadium to still be in use, and not just for football. It can be used for graduation ceremonies and other big events, such as state band competitions. It can be rented for football playoff games and it could be a concert site, although alcohol can’t be sold there because it’s on school property.
“We’re always going to be a one-school town, and we think this will be the last stadium we’ll ever build,” Williams said. “We haven’t had a lot of option to it.”
Certainly not from fans who’ve attended games at Eagle Stadium and haven’t been able to find a seat or have had to use the portable toilets brought in for games. The new stadium isn’t as much of an attempt to “keep up with the Joneses” as an attempt to keep up with a growing city of nearly 85,000 and a growing school that now has more than 5,000 students. Allen’s marching band alone has 600 members.
“With the band and band parents alone, they might need that new stadium,” joked Tom Kimbrough, the legendary Plano football coach who is now Plano ISD’s executive director of facilities services. Kimbrough was on the sidelines when Plano’s 14,224-seat Wildcat Stadium, later renamed John Clark Stadium, opened in 1977. That stadium is still one of the bigger ones in the area, but he doesn’t remember any negative reaction to its size.
“If you’re winning, you need it,” Kimbrough said. “If you’re not, your crowds are going to leave. But I don’t think that’s going to be a problem with Allen.”
