Everything is bigger in Texas, especially when it goes to football. Over the weekend, a school board in McKinney, Texas, near Dallas, approved a proposal for issuing bonds for about 220 million dollars as a part of the sum will be used for the construction of a stadium with a capacity of 12,000, which will cost about 62.8 million dollars, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The organization of Grassroots McKinney is against the bond issue. “We are disappointed,” Mike Giles, the leader of Grassroots McKinney said. “But people said their word.”
According to some cost to build the stadium is too big, but this is not the first area asking your local school board to build a multimillion dollar stadium. In Texas, however, even the opponents of McKinney believe that the school stadium is too small.
“I think McKinney need a new stadium,” Tim Carroll said. Carroll is responsible for public information on the nearby school district Allen, which became famous in 2012 when there was build a stadium with 18,000 seats for about $ 60 million dollars.
According to Carol construction costs in a city like Dallas are high, which is ultimately increasing the prices of these stadiums.
The new stadium of McKinney will not be opened until at least 2018. Tim Carroll also noted that the McKinney’s current stadium is no longer enough for the audience to attend the matches of the school team. There had been similar problems in Allen before the project for the new stadium was approved in 2009. Actually Allen’s new stadium received only an approval to be built in 2009. And the stadium went to exploitation 3 years later. But eventually when the new stadium was opened in 2012, nearly 22 000 people attended Allen’s first home game of the season. There are between 16,000 and 18,000 people, who regularly visit the home matches of the team, according to Carroll. And even more impressive is the fact that when the team is visiting, the fans can reach the number of 12 000, which is not very unusual for a schools’ team. So, the McKinney’s new larger stadium would be beneficial to the fans of Allen. There are about 6400 students in Allen, while there are three high schools in McKinney with about 7700 students in total. When the number of the students is so big, it is not surprising why the new larger stadium is needed. “McKinney has 3 great high schools and they play against big schools, that’s why they need a stadium with much more seats,” Carroll said.
Big schools mean a lot of money. The tickets for the games cost $ 8 in McKinney and Allen. That means the school Allen earns more than 144,000 dollars in revenue per match only from tickets.