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This place kicks the ass of 70% of the FCS school stadiums...

http://www.lipstickalley.com/f75/what-6 ... ke-421659/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Graduation rates? Quality of teaching? Nah, let's build a $50 million stadium for a public high school.


Oh Texas.

God damn! I remember seeing the concept drawings.

That place turned out beautiful.

And IIRC, the citizens voted on the funding for this, so it shouldn't have any effect on spending elsewhere.

93henfan wrote:And IIRC, the citizens voted on the funding for this, so it shouldn't have any effect on spending elsewhere.

In addition, the bond included $40 mil. expansion for the fine arts wing of Allen HS and $20 mil. for all of the other schools in the district, but that seems to be left out by a lot of the stories. I agree...it's the community's money...they can do whatever they want with it. Plus it'll probably make money in the long-run.

Allen HS has a great marching band (they have played in the Rose Bowl parade and Macy's T'giving parade, for example), so now they have a suitable venue for their halftime shows!

Looks pretty quiet and hot to me.

Big McLargehuge wrote:Graduation rates? Quality of teaching? Nah, let's build a $50 million stadium for a public high school.


Oh Texas.

60 million

∞∞∞ wrote:

93henfan wrote:And IIRC, the citizens voted on the funding for this, so it shouldn't have any effect on spending elsewhere.

In addition, the bond included $40 mil. expansion for the fine arts wing of Allen HS and $20 mil. for all of the other schools in the district, but that seems to be left out by a lot of the stories. I agree...it's the community's money...they can do whatever they want with it. Plus it'll probably make money in the long-run.

At 18,000 tickets at $10 apiece, plus considering the other $60m you mentioned, it will take more than a century to pay for itself, not including inflation. A long time, either way.

Tod wrote:

∞∞∞ wrote: In addition, the bond included $40 mil. expansion for the fine arts wing of Allen HS and $20 mil. for all of the other schools in the district, but that seems to be left out by a lot of the stories. I agree...it's the community's money...they can do whatever they want with it. Plus it'll probably make money in the long-run.

At 18,000 tickets at $10 apiece, plus considering the other $60m you mentioned, it will take more than a century to pay for itself, not including inflation. A long time, either way.

But can one really place a price on being able to say you have a bigger dick than your rival?

Tod wrote:

∞∞∞ wrote: In addition, the bond included $40 mil. expansion for the fine arts wing of Allen HS and $20 mil. for all of the other schools in the district, but that seems to be left out by a lot of the stories. I agree...it's the community's money...they can do whatever they want with it. Plus it'll probably make money in the long-run.

At 18,000 tickets at $10 apiece, plus considering the other $60m you mentioned, it will take more than a century to pay for itself, not including inflation. A long time, either way.

Longer than that I suspect. They are selling 7500 season tickets @ $40 per. They are then only alloting 5500 other seats per game for visiting teams and walk-ups. The remainder are band and students. (ie: no cash)

The hope is to "farm" out the venue for other events: concerts, etc.

Texas is nuts when it comes to HS football. One in our area made 10 mil in improvements to their stadium rather than build a new (second) HS

damn...that is how you do it.

Grizalltheway wrote:Looks pretty quiet and hot to me.

+1

Tod wrote:

∞∞∞ wrote: In addition, the bond included $40 mil. expansion for the fine arts wing of Allen HS and $20 mil. for all of the other schools in the district, but that seems to be left out by a lot of the stories. I agree...it's the community's money...they can do whatever they want with it. Plus it'll probably make money in the long-run.

At 18,000 tickets at $10 apiece, plus considering the other $60m you mentioned, it will take more than a century to pay for itself, not including inflation. A long time, either way.

ARe those just high school football games? ARe you taking into consideration concessions, championship games, other public events, etc... There is great potential. We have a baseball stadium that is for 3 local teams(a minor league and 2 college teams) and it hosts various festivals, concerts and other local happenings.

CatMom wrote:

Tod wrote: At 18,000 tickets at $10 apiece, plus considering the other $60m you mentioned, it will take more than a century to pay for itself, not including inflation. A long time, either way.

Longer than that I suspect. They are selling 7500 season tickets @ $40 per. They are then only alloting 5500 other seats per game for visiting teams and walk-ups. The remainder are band and students. (ie: no cash)

The hope is to "farm" out the venue for other events: concerts, etc.

Texas is nuts when it comes to HS football. One in our area made 10 mil in improvements to their stadium rather than build a new (second) HS

Yup, using it for concerts is a great idea. Coastal Carolina did that in 2003 and the revenue helped with upgrading the facilities.

Ibanez wrote:

CatMom wrote: Longer than that I suspect. They are selling 7500 season tickets @ $40 per. They are then only alloting 5500 other seats per game for visiting teams and walk-ups. The remainder are band and students. (ie: no cash)

The hope is to "farm" out the venue for other events: concerts, etc.

Texas is nuts when it comes to HS football. One in our area made 10 mil in improvements to their stadium rather than build a new (second) HS

Yup, using it for concerts is a great idea. Coastal Carolina did that in 2003 and the revenue helped with upgrading the facilities.

Some obscure band called The Rolling Stones played Wa-Griz in '06.

Grizalltheway wrote:

Ibanez wrote:

Yup, using it for concerts is a great idea. Coastal Carolina did that in 2003 and the revenue helped with upgrading the facilities.

Some obscure band called The Rolling Stones played Wa-Griz in '06.

Sell outs.

According to an article in the Texas Tribune in May 2010 announcing the ground breaking, this stadium is to be the 5th largest high school stadium in the state. At the time, Allen High School had 5000 students. This apparently is not unusual in its county, where the four largest high schools by enrollment exist, all with about 5000 students. There were 650 students in the band.

Allen High School brings 8000 fans to road games according to the article.

I also note this ad:

Allen-Southlake Football Tickets On Sale August 27
General admission tickets for the Allen - Southlake HS game on August 31st will go on sale Monday August 27th at the Allen ISD Athletic Offices (301 Rivercrest Boulevard). Reserved season tickets for Allen are sold out for the 2012 season.

Individual game tickets go on sale each week of the season for the game that coming weekend. The cost is $6 for adults and $4 for students and children age 3 and older for advance tickets. All tickets purchased at the gate on the night off the game will be $8.

I appreciate the posting of the stadium pictures.

As a high school, this raises eyebrows. If this were a small college with 5000 students and a football stadium with 7000 seats, to which 7000 additional temporary seats have to be set up to accommodate 14,000 attendance, with expected enrollment growth averaging 8% annually for the foreseeable future, nobody would be complaining about them building such a stadium with 18,000. But, this is a high school.

That said, the Allen Independent School District seems to be following the lead of its larger neighbor to the south, the Plano ISD. Plano has 6 "high schools" for 9th and 10th grades that feed into 3 "senior high schools" that are laid out like community colleges, with large multi-building campuses, large numbers of AP classes and extensive vocational.

Allen is smaller, but in 1999, the new Allen High School was built in a large community college-like campus almost across the street from the old Allen High School, which is now a feeder "Freshman Center". Apparently, they felt a demand for several high schools and decided to build a large campus laid out like a community college to accommodate past and predicted growth. This makes four large 5000-student high schools on large college-like campuses relatively close to each other in the same county on the north side of Dallas.

My local community is similar to Allen, in that the population has sky rocketed in recent years as the suburban area of Washington DC has grown into it the same way the Dallas metro area suburbs have grown into Allen. With not that many more people, we have five high schools that compete at the highest level in Virginia. Allen High School is like 3-4 of them combined. Our school district has about 26,000 students K-12, while Allen has about 19,000. My daughter is in high school and we attended a few football games last fall together. There appeared to be 3-4,000 people in a attendance. Now, if all five of our local high schools were combined into one large complex of a high school, I wonder what that would be like. If Allen had to have 3-4 high schools instead of the mega-high school, I wonder how much the combination would have cost compared to what they did.

I grew up in Texas playing football. You have to be there to understand the level of devotion and dedication to the game to people have at every level.

CSUBUCDAD wrote:I grew up in Texas playing football. You have to be there to understand the level of devotion and dedication to the game to people have at every level.

Don't think anyone's disputing that. It's their dedication to quality education that we're questioning.

The first game in the new stadium is tonight.

21,000 tickets have been sold (there is a lot of standing room only space they can sell).

They are 0-5 lifetime against their opponent tonight, Carroll High School, all games in the state playoffs.

What a way to being a new era with this stadium.

I think a lot of colleges would be jealous of the support this high school gets.

Allen High School shut out the defending Texas 5A state champs 24-0 last night in front of more than 22,000 fans.