Four years after the Allen (Texas) lndependent school district opened its $60 million multi-sport stadium, voters in McKinney, Texas, ensured yet another multimillion-dollar facility will be coming to the Lone Star State.
On Saturday, voters approved a $220 million bond proposal from the McKinney Independent school district that contains $50.3 million in funding for a new 12,000-seat stadium, according to Nanette Light of the Dallas Morning News. Coupled with an additional $12.5 million left over from a previously passed bond, which will go toward funding stadium infrastructure, the overall cost of the facility is expected to reach nearly $63 million.
Michael Florek of SportsDayDFW.com shared an artist’s rendition of what the finished product will look like:
McKinney North coach Mike Fecci
on new stadium: Voters ‘really had their voices be heard': https://t.co/CI013mOdSc pic.twitter.com/UG9YNwYBrD— Michael Florek (@michaelflorek) May 9, 2016
“The voters in McKinney really got out in force and really had their voices be heard,” McKinney North High School head football coach Mike Fecci told Florek. “It’s going to be a top-notch stadium that is going to bring a lot to McKinney. The location is prime I think, where they’re putting it. It’s going to be an exciting deal for our kids to be able to play in a venue like that.”
The stadium’s projected price tag would make it the most expensive high school football stadium ever built, narrowly edging the one currently under construction for the Katy Independent school district in Houston. Voters approved roughly $58 million for that project in 2014, according to Sebasian Herrera of the Houston Chronicle, but the construction cost has jumped $4.5 million since then.
Much like with Allen High School’s $60 million stadium, McKinney’s new mammoth project is drawing mixed reviews. According to Light, an anti-bond political action committee called Grassroots McKinney came into being prior to the vote Saturday, Its leader, Mike Giles, called the new stadium an “embarrassment” but added, “the people have spoken.”
Scout.com’s Matt Stepp described the vote to Bleacher Report’s Damon Sayles as “the will of the people being done,” adding:
“A lot of people looking on the outside don’t understand how Texas school finance works. Bond money is not taking away money from academics; bond money is used for construction of facilities and for maintenance. I think a lot of people don’t understand that if a bond is passed for facilities, it’s only to be used for facilities.”
Regardless of which side of the stadium debate they were on, McKinney’s residents can now only hope the stadium’s construction process goes more smoothly than the one in Allen. Less than two years after opening its $60 million stadium, the Allen school district was forced to shutter it indefinitely due to “extensive cracking” found “in the concrete of the stadium’s concourse.”