Over the weekend, voters in McKinney, Texas, voted to publicly finance the construction of a new $62.8 million 12,000-seat high school football stadium. The McKinney Independent School District proposition included issuing a $220 million bond to improve facilities at local public schools, among them what will be the most expensive high school football stadium in the country. “We’re visionaries,” the district superintendent said after the measure passed.
Obviously, not everyone was enthralled with the vision of funding pro-style arenas for the local high school team. But the leadership of “Grassroots McKinney,” which spearheaded opposition to the new stadium, seemed resigned to the fact that sometimes democracy bites. “We’re disappointed,” Mike Giles, a leader of the group, told the Dallas Morning News. “But the people have spoken.” And they did so with a Texas twang.
Once completed, the new stadium will host the three high school teams in the district. Going big, particularly when it comes to high school football stadiums, is a bit of Texas tradition at this point. Eight miles south of McKinney’s current 7,000-seat stadium sits Allen High School’s own $60 million stadium, complete with a jumbotron.
*Correction, May 10, 2016: This post originally misstated that the high school stadium in Allen, Texas, is eight miles north of the planned stadium in McKinney; it is eight miles south.
