High school unveils $60 million stadium
AllenHigh near Dallas christens its new stadium Friday night. (AP Photo)
No, we’re not talking about the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s the Allen (Texas) High School Eagles, which christens the 18,000-seat stadium against defending champion Southlake Carroll.
The stadium also features a multi-level press box, wrestling and weight rooms, a golf practice area and artificial turf.
It’s not the largest high school stadium in Texas, but it is the biggest that houses a single team.
Allen High supporters say the stadium is well worth the money, even in a down economy in which many school systems are struggling to find money to pay teachers.
“There will be kids that come through here that will be able to play on a field that only a few people will ever get the chance to play in,” said Wes Bishop, the father of a player and head of the booster club, told The Associated Press.
Collin County, where Allen High is located, is a suburb of Dallas and one of the most affluent areas of Texas.
Voters approved funding for the stadium in a 2009 bond referendum.
Officials concede they will never recoup the cost of building the stadium but say revenues — including six sponsorships that will bring in $35,000 a year — will cover the cost of operating it.
“Our intention is not to recoup the money it cost to build the stadium,” school district spokesman Tim Carroll told the AP. “It’s not practical to say we’ll get that money back. [But] the revenue we receive from the stadium will far exceed the cost of operating it.”
Carroll has pointed out that the funds for the stadium were part of a larger $219 million bond package and could not have been used for classroom purposes.
“In Texas, funding is completely separate between capital projects and general (education) fund,” he told Rivals.com in a 2010 article. “If we don’t build the stadium, none of that money could go to teachers or classrooms.”
What do you think of spending public funds on such an extravagant high school stadium? Is it money well spent, or another example of misplaced priorities?
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149 comments Add your comment
Sick and Tired
August 31st, 2012
1:35 pm
Who makes the rule that funds can’t be transferred? Duh, the same people who voted for this bond, so hid behind “It’s the rule” all you want. It is absolutely disgusting that there are school systems suffering to the point of oppression while this one spends $60 MILLION on a football stadium. When will we as a nation get some freaking sense? We are not at all a UNITED States of America. This is yet another example of people out for themselves. Why not work to change the rules so that funds can be transferred to another fund, or even better yet, shared with a less “affluent” school system so that the poor don’t keep getting poorer? The same attitude that has gotten our nation in the mess it’s in now. Call it socialism or whatever you want; I just call it community, or lack there of.
papa pink
August 31st, 2012
1:38 pm
This is a shame. The money should have been used to raise the educational standards.
Mr. Riley
August 31st, 2012
1:41 pm
This is pure foolishness…and we wonder why this country is in the state of despair that it is in…
JB
August 31st, 2012
1:46 pm
You didn’t build that. Somebody else built that…………
Bob
August 31st, 2012
1:54 pm
It is certainly their prerogatve to build, but it is unquestionably misplaced priority.
tim
August 31st, 2012
2:09 pm
It seems the school system in Dallas is as dumb as the Cobb County school system.
thunder
August 31st, 2012
2:36 pm
Hey football is more important than education in texas
HUH?
August 31st, 2012
3:24 pm
What Recession??
Talk about messed up values
August 31st, 2012
3:27 pm
The people in the community have every right to do what they want, they voted for it and they get to pay for it. Just as I have the right to look at what they do and say “talk about messed up values and priorities.”
GwinnettDad
August 31st, 2012
3:45 pm
I knew it was Texas before I ever read. Some of the bed-wetting whiners here despise freedom. I’d recommend that they go sit on the potty until their infantile temper tantrum passes. Then, next time, they might actually be grateful that we live in a country of the free. That does not require the approval on ninnies and boobs that have their sense of fairness violated, which causes them to soil their panties and scream about “fairness.” Get a grip and embrace freedom and get off the damn liberal plantation.
Gatekeeper
August 31st, 2012
3:48 pm
@ Melinda O’Brien What kind of practice field does the marching band have? How does it compare to the practice field(s) and stadium that the football team gets to use? Sharing practice fields with other sports and organizations is a sore subject in some counties around metro Atlanta. The football boosters like to think they own the stadium and practice fields and often the principals go along with that line of thinking. One county voted for a local option sales tax that included building or renovating playing and practice fields. Those were paid for with sales taxes and as such the fields should be shared with the soccer team, lacrosse team, marching band, ROTC, and others based on that fact alone. It seems they get minimal access.
Will
August 31st, 2012
3:48 pm
Football is KING in redneck America, duh.
Rob
August 31st, 2012
3:58 pm
Well everything is bigger in Texas Even the people that oppose the decision will eventually be there. Football is a huge sport over there so a lot of money is put into the sports program. It is unfortunate but you hope that at the same time education in that area is just as important and the money finds its way into that category as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuYNP5xrwMI&feature=share
Old-fashioned Prof
August 31st, 2012
3:59 pm
To Athletic Supporter: “the money couldn’t have went”? Where did you learn English? This illustrates precisely why the money would be better spent on education so that people would know how to write.
For Education
August 31st, 2012
4:03 pm
I agree with Old Fashioned Prof. A little more education would go a long way.
Old-fashioned Prof
August 31st, 2012
4:15 pm
I like to go on the internet and puff up my ego by putting people down for their poor grammar. I simply don’t understand that the internet isn’t a term paper.
Doodaddy
August 31st, 2012
4:22 pm
Absolutely obscene. Easy to see where the priorities are in Texas, and where those administrators’ have their heads.
WeAreAllen
August 31st, 2012
4:36 pm
I live, work, and send a child to school in Allen. There are so many things wrong with most of the comments.
Funding: The voters of the Allen ISD voted overwhelming 2-to-1 to build this. All the money comes from bonded indebtedness which is in Texas the only legal way to pay for facilities. We in Allen have an average annual income of nearly $100k. We have plenty of money. No money from outside sources was used.
How? In Texas we do not have a state income tax, very few unions and we have wisely avoided electing any democrats to high state office since the 1990s. It is illegal for the State to run at a deficit or borrow money to operate. If we don’t have the money, we don’t do it. Texas has had more job created than the other 49 states combined. Housing prices, wages, and opportunity are all going up.
Spending that much money: Since all the raw materials needed to build this stadium are already on the planet, we essentially spent $60 million on wages. Most of the jobs, and there were more than 1500 man/years of labor involved, went to jobs for working class citizens. We lavishly spent our money on people who mostly live outside of town and even outside of Texas. We hired many hundreds, and they in turn built a stadium for us.
Ethical questions: The cure for poverty is jobs and not welfare. Why do some people think that giving away hundreds of dollars is morally superior to creating jobs that pay thousands of dollars is beyond my comprehension. We did not waste a penny. We spent it on people.
Doing without: Our teachers are paid well, our class sizes are small, we have been hiring teachers and not a single student in the Allen ISD has to go without any of the tools of instruction and education. Operating funds are separate from bonded indebtedness. Not a penny was taken from instruction. No one goes hungry. We are affluent and we decided to spend our money on a stadium and not rims.
Down economy? Not here. We created jobs and those jobs supported a huge number of families. Again, it is foolish to think that giving a man money is superior to giving him a job. If you are a kid whose dad is employed you don’t have to stand in line for that annual backpack full of freebies. Your dad gladly bought them for you.
Why the hatred? Envy. Because we husband our money, protect our children, and watch out for our neighbors, we had the resources to build exactly what we wanted. Twenty years from now that stadium will still be serving Allen and neighboring communities. It will still look good, too. She’s a beaut! Texas is not a rust-belt state where jobs and people are leaving because of high taxation, increasing debt, crippling unions and most important too many Dems. Liberalism kills jobs. We are conservatives. We want as many people to work as possible. Working beats welfare.
The Final Analysis: We have it and many people who don’t are mad it isn’t them. Here’s a hint, stop wasting your money on government, unions, and Democrats. All three will lead you to penury. I offer not just the struggling northern states, but all of Europe. They ran their countries as liberals and now they are worse than broke.
We didn’t build it to recoup our costs. We paid for it up front. Do you recoupl the cost of your Starbuck’s? No. But do you still do it because you want to? Yes. Instead of peeing away our money, we built the finest high school football stadium in the country, until someone outdoes us. And when the do we will applaud them. Because our stadium is a monument to good fiscal management, craftmanship, and civic excellence.
Heck, even Forbes Managine says it’s a brilliant move. Allen has branded itself as not just another ‘burb, but rather a place for people to move to, invest, and send their kids to school. We never turn a kid away. We educate all comers.
And we have plenty of money left over because we are conservatives.
Lib in Cobb
August 31st, 2012
4:40 pm
Much more important than education, of course it’s Texas.
M Brad
August 31st, 2012
4:53 pm
Has the Super Bowl Date been set??? You would think the the money could be better spent elsewhere, unless now , maybe the Pros may use it for a practice facility!!! High schools still only play 10 games a year, not counting playoffs.. What will they do with this stadiumfor the remaining 9 months…
MUSTANG100
August 31st, 2012
5:00 pm
HEY!!!!!!!!!!! Texans are SERIOUS about their football!!!!!!!!!! Some of their high school head coaches make more than most 1A head coaches. The democratic system at work here: “If we pay for it, they will build it”.
RG
August 31st, 2012
5:03 pm
We Are Allen, you win! Very well stated! What you have there will never happen here metro Atlanta. The rims comment was a classic! Congrats on the stadium, fine arts facility, and the band (I teach a student who moved to us from that program, he and his family are a class act).
Trotter
August 31st, 2012
5:27 pm
60M for a HS stadium? Really….Seriously?
BobInTexas
August 31st, 2012
5:27 pm
What many of you don’t seem to understand is that the education system in Allen, TX, from pre-kindergarten through High School is exemplary and far above the national average in every possible category. We have one high school for a town of roughly 100,000 people. The high school campus is gorgeous and rivals many major universities. The graduation rate is almost 100% and the vast majority of the kids here go on to college. Allen is one of the safest communities of its size in the country and is routinely ranked as one of the best places to live.
Did you know we also have a multi-million dollar aquatic center? The same bond that brought us the stadium also brought the high school a performing arts center that is better than most you will find in large cities, where our 5 orchestras, including our Grammy award winning symphony perform. It also includes a world-class restaurant and food services program that also exceeds what most colleges provide their students to learn in.
Our kids have the best facilities, best class rooms, best teachers, and yes, best stadium that our tax dollars can give them. So, before you say we’re wasting money we could have spent on something else… you should come live here and see why Allen is one of the best places to live in the country.
And by the way, the game sold out. That’s 18,000 seats and 3,500 standing room only… 21,500 attendees at a high school game.
Aquagirl
August 31st, 2012
5:43 pm
We are affluent and we decided to spend our money on a stadium and not rims.
The people with rims spent maybe $1000 to look obnoxiously stupid and wasteful, you could have saved yourself $59,999,000 or so, honey. And we’d be equally impressed.
Q
August 31st, 2012
5:45 pm
I find it intersting that people who live way in Texas feel the need to come to a Georgia newspaper site to defend their decision. Are you trolling the internet looking for articles about tthis stadium and worrying about what others are saying?
Why the need to explain yourselves…especially to people who will more than likely never step foot in your city? It’s your vote….stand by it and keep it moving. I’ve always been told that opinions are like a-holes…everybody has one!
The more you try to defend, the more you appear to be unsure of yourselves.
Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!!
rlm
August 31st, 2012
6:11 pm
These people are nuts! What priorities are they showing their children. They must have all gotten hit in the head when they played back in the day. Personally they must all be hoping their children can go on to play in the SEC not in Texas if they want to see real football. We don’t need high school stadiums like this. Our children go on to real lives after high school
One Striking Rattler
August 31st, 2012
6:12 pm
@Ray, amazing that people still believe successful is the same as rich. All rich people are happy people. All rich people live lives they are proud of, right? Not an alcoholic or addict among them. All their kids are are great and their marriages solid. They have money and that alone makes the quality of their lives better than working people with intact families living honorable lives.
Spoken like someone on the outside looking in.
Saintmarks
August 31st, 2012
6:33 pm
I am a Goergia native so I visit the website and comment frequetnly, so Q above, drop the troll charges.
For the last 8 years I have lived in the next town to the north, McKinney, TX. Georgia readers should try to grasp the differences in Texas Independent School Districts to what we have in Georgia. County run systems with a smattering of city run systems. Even though the city of Allen is the location of the Allen ISD, the ISD is not city run. It is truly an Independent School District. The lines are not contiguous with the city limits, in fact a decent portion of the Allen ISD overlaps into my city, McKinney.
Allen is a very prosperous area, I would liken it to Roswell or Alpharetta. It is an upper class suburb, but not entirely a bedroom community, has a decent commercial and business base. Imagine what an independent school district in Roswell or Alpharetta might do with their schools if they weren’t bound to a county system and you might come close to understanding the dynamics here.
I am thankful that those with local knowledge have chimed in, the snarky, uneducated comments from those either envious or ignorant have been set to rest by those with information. Keep in mind this largesse is not the case with the majority of the districts in Texas, so if any of you Georgians that think you know better, IF you move to Texas there are less stellar areas that will be as moribund and incompetent as the school districte you left behind in Georgia.
Abbysenia
August 31st, 2012
6:52 pm
Well… Melinda represented it well a few comments up. However, I’m not too surprised. This is conservative, republic of Texas! They found the money for a football stadium, but will complain about the funds going to help the poor. This is an affluent county with the money available to pay for it…so no problem there. However, looking from the outside in…it’s bizarre to see this type of money spent on extra-curricula-non-academic purposes. I’m sure they would have a fit if they saw the same amount go to keep people off the street, fund public transit or anything else. Like Melinda said, in Texas, football is KING! It’s sad but that’s the America we live in. Plenty of money for our luxuries and non-for our essentials. Don’t raise taxes by a penny…be need it to build multi-million dollar stadiums for one…
Help we were hit by a storm give us money
August 31st, 2012
7:13 pm
I hope Texas never asks for federal money for storms like hurricanes when they can spend this much money on a football stadium. Why do these places beg for money when they get hit by a disaster when they can spend this much money on a place to play a game. When other states suffer they beg on TV to rebuild a million dollar home in the state.
dennis burke
August 31st, 2012
7:35 pm
i can only assume that the peyote plant is prominently featured on the city’s seal
Go Blazers!
August 31st, 2012
7:43 pm
class warfare……….Ill be glad when Obama is out of office!
From Allen
August 31st, 2012
10:14 pm
I live here and am ashamed our claim to fame is a 60 mil football stadium- but what do you expect from a town who thinks they are better than everyone else. Keep living through the kids. Loved the comment “but we needed a new stadium” …. very ashamed.
GwinnettDad
August 31st, 2012
10:19 pm
The whiners continue to bellyache about this being a free country. Let that HS do what it wants, and rest of the bed-wetters can whine all day, all night, and simply wet their pants.
Ed Costley
August 31st, 2012
10:36 pm
Being a Texas native and a secondary administrator, I appreciate a community standing for what they believe in, my guess the stadium will host more than high school football…youth leagues, graduations, practice facility for area teams and 800+ band members wow. They’ll save unlike others who will need to repair fields due to drought and floods 15-20 years down road so many generations will have access. Only if my Missouri colleagues knew what a true spirit of game and community was about. Oh and I read you took care of performing arts facility so you do look after all individuals
hind tit
August 31st, 2012
10:46 pm
And you wonder what’s wrong with America.
Texas Native
August 31st, 2012
11:07 pm
What I’m seeing here is a lot of jealous comments from small minds who drank the koolaid and think that the almighty government should take care of them from cradle to grave and should play Robin Hood, taking from those who are successful to give to those who refuse to climb out of their situations.
Have you been to some of the new stadiums in Gwinnett County? The ones paid for by the 1 percent sales tax? They are pretty darn elaborate. However, the stadiums at the longer established schools were paid for by fund raising efforts by the people in each individual school’s community. When my children were younger we lived in the Shiloh district and I purchased numerous Kroger gift certificates and helped in other fund raisers so the school could build their stadium. I’m less than thrilled that the new schools got their facilities with so little effort, but that’s just the way things are.
It sounds like this Dallas area school district has done a tremendous thing for the people in their school community. More power to them.
It's over now
August 31st, 2012
11:45 pm
Let me get this straight, a bunch of people in Texas want to spend THEIR money on a football stadium and you folks in Atlanta are getting upset? You died and left you king of anything???
Having relatives in Katy, I know they pay alot in school taxes what they do with tax money is their own business, not yours.
Quit spoiling other people’s joy and get a life – and by the sounds of it get a job too……
Alex
September 1st, 2012
12:10 am
Why does everyone keep focusing on the fact they don’t plan to recoup their money? Of course they don’t, they’re a high school. Do you think they expect to recoup the other 159 million of bond money they spent on the fine arts center and new classrooms, or whatever else the money went to?
Thomas Brown
September 1st, 2012
12:28 am
$ 3,333 per seat to build a 18,000 seat football stadium in Texas for a single high school team, and here we cannot even come up with the monies to build UGA an indoor practice facility, nor a gym which has hosted no tournament games since 1971.
Saintmarks
September 1st, 2012
1:30 am
Does the comment “they could spend the money helping keep kids off the streets” sound as ignorant to any of you as it does to me? This school district has excelled in the classroom, in the fine arts, in the community as well as football. Just because they spent a boat load on a stadium doesn’t mean they haven’t spent money on their whole system.
Football, band, orchestra, school pride, great schools with MULTIPLE avenues for kids to find their niche and excell… this is what keeps kids off the street.
I just don’t get the ignorance, I really don’t…
BubbaDaBaller
September 1st, 2012
7:56 am
It’s Texas and Football…Friday Night Lights baby!
RG Brewer
September 1st, 2012
11:24 am
There have been alot of ignorant comments made here.
This was a bond issue passed by the voters of Allen. It was not forced taxation. The bond was for $119 million which included the stadium, performing arts center and service distribution center. This money could only be used for those projects. This bond was preceded by one several years earlier($219 million) that paid for new schools and technology. Allen continues to add computer and science labs to elementary and middle schools. The high school is state-of-the-art. DO NOT assume that the stadium was built at the expense of education facilities. Allen has done both. Allen students perform extremely well. Graduates are recruited heavily by colleges. I refer to academic scholarships.
Michael
September 1st, 2012
11:46 pm
Drug money.
Shadow
September 2nd, 2012
8:21 pm
Hummm, Gee Dad, Somebody lined their pockets with gold!
www
September 5th, 2012
9:24 am
sure, why should the educational system spend money on educating our citizens when it can spend $60 million on a stadium? texas shows where it’s priorities lie once again.
Bling Bling
September 5th, 2012
2:05 pm
I bet Obama gave it to them. Just added it to his national debt. After all it’s for the CHILDREN.
TrueTexan
September 5th, 2012
3:52 pm
After reading the multiple comments from people outside the state of Texas cracks me up. You morons have no clue. Get off the government tit and embrace capitalism. Allen went from a small country town to one of the nicest up and coming area’s in the state maybe even the country. Fortune 500 companies are moving to Texas because of capitalism and the Texas legislature embraces these companies which in turn allows for stadiums like this to be built. Unfortunately success breeds jealousy. I dont even live in Allen but all I have to say is Texas is better than any other state in the US. So next time you want to complain about what you dont have – just wish you were from TEXAS!!!