The fame of new stadiums

This Dallas Morning News article was picked up by the Boston Herald

The new Allen , Texas , 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?

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 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."

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 TV.

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 band competitions. It can be rented for playoff games and it could be a concert site, ...

I'm sure that's what Jerry Jones told the city of Irving, too.

What happens when five years after it opens, a facility is no longer "state of the art"?