Texas: High school Football stadium worth 60$ million is shutdown because of structural problems. - Polidicks

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/02/28/what-cost-60-million-and-just-shut-down-this-texas-high-school-football-stadium/[/url] [QUOTE]Let’s take a walk down memory lane, back to the long-forgotten era known as 2012. A high school football stadium in suburban Dallas with an eye-popping price tag — $60 million — opened up that August, drawing quite a bit of attention. The stadium had 18,000 seats, a scoreboard with a 38-foot-wide high-definition screen and practice areas for golf and wrestling. It wasn’t the University of Oregon’s shiny new football facility, but it seemed to be as close as you could get in high school. You already saw the headline, so you know where this is going: The school district announced Thursday that Eagle Stadium in Allen, Texas, would close indefinitely due to “extensive cracking” in the concourse as well as other potential structural problems. “This is a significant investment for our community,” Beth Nicholas, the interim superintendent, said in a statement. “We are very disappointed and upset that these problems have arisen. It is unacceptable.” The issue was first discovered the month the stadium opened and has only gotten worse[/QUOTE] Highschools have incredible budgets.

And none of it goes to actual education.

Maybe the civil engineer's education money was spent on the stadium.

Football is education to some schools.

[QUOTE=JDER14;44083286]Football is education to some schools.[/QUOTE] Sounds like Texas.

[QUOTE=JDER14;44083286]Football is education to some schools.[/QUOTE] Its amazing that you can get a scholarship without knowing how to read.

That high schools stadium cost more than my entire college's athletic department (fields, stadiums, etc)

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;44083221]Highschools have incredible budgets.[/QUOTE] *for football but nothing else because they dumped everything on football in the hopes of producing a big NFL star that would rake in lots of notoriety in order to grant them the capability to increase costs to go to the school and rake in an even higher budget for making it more desirable for families to want to move to the area

What even is the school's population? The article didn't seem to say.

[QUOTE=dai;44084231]*for football but nothing else because they dumped everything on football in the hopes of producing a big NFL star that would rake in lots of notoriety in order to grant them the capability to increase costs to go to the school and rake in an even higher budget for making it more desirable for families to want to move to the area[/QUOTE] The highschool I went to prioritized football, despite going to states and nationals in literally EVERYTHING ELSE BUT FOOTBALL. It was to the point where people were literally state champions in over a dozen things, yet football was still priority.

Now imagine. 2 million spent on the field, and 58 million to the actual academics of that school, and schools around it.

sports are very important for schools to keep running/funding but they shouldn't be the absolute priority

lol 60 million spent on a fucking school stadium Because we should spend all of our funding on a god damned stadium instead of education

That's gonna take a lot of industrial epoxy. . . Usually with situations like this, they shore up the areas that are cracking with steel plates bolted into the concrete, with the cracks filled with this German-manufactured architectural epoxy that's strong as a motherfucker. It's actually stronger than the formulative strength of the concrete. What happens in a lawsuit situation like this is as follows: The contract between the school and the architectural firm was originally negotiated and brought to terms by the AIA (American Institute of Architecture). The architectural firm then contracted out the structural engineer, contractors, etc etc under them. That means that the school sues the architectural firm, who then sues the structural engineer and the contractors. As we say in the architectural world, [b]shit runs downhill[/b].

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;44083221]Highschools have incredible budgets.[/QUOTE] and a propensity to hire shit contractors my former high school was recently rebuilt to the tune of $110 million it was designed to house 1750 students it was over that capacity number before it was finished, and is falling apart two years later and a brand new A/C unit on the roof caught on fire, burned out the roof and rendered the band room unusable

Allen High has a little over 5,000 students in 10-12th grade, and one of the best football programs in Texas. They built the stadium (and a field house I believe) with bond money, so it wasn't directly taken from the schools budget. IIRC they had planned on making some revenue back by hosting playoff games and other events at the stadium. Hell, they have almost 9,000 season ticket holders... For a high school team. Anyways, I'm amazed the city didn't have any other issues that 60 million dollars couldn't fix but it's not my money.

this is texas, the countries capital of high school football, so the pricetag and size of the stadium really shouldn't come as a suprise.

Great, more money wasted that could've been used for better things.

It took less than that to build the Metrodome....

Keep in mind this project wasn't paid for with state/federal money. The school district arranged a vote and the residents overwhelmingly agreed to a tax rate of $.150 for every $100 in property value as part of an initiative to build grand new facilities. This equals out to about $10,882,258.5 a year in funding for the school district to build and maintain its facilities. This is in addition to the state and federal funding they receive. They also sell bonds and do fundraisers. The stadium is just one of many extravagant facilities that have been built by the school district - they have also built a library, science center, culinary school, swimming complex and are currently building a new 32 million dollar facility(no idea what it is). tl;dr, the stadium is part of a well-rounded attempt by the Allen school district to build world-class facilities for their students(18,000 of them). The stadium was also used for more than football, it was used for soccer, running and school district events/assemblies. If their school district was complete shit and they decided to build this, sure, I'd be angry. But that's not the case.

Should have spent $70 million on it.

Played college ball ya' know.

[QUOTE=cqbcat;44088651]Should have spent $70 million on it.[/QUOTE] Should have forced the architectural firm to hire a contractor that knows how not to fuck up large-scale jobs. Something like this is [b]extremely[/b] straight-forward. The situation with concrete is not [b]if[/b] it cracks, but [b]when, where, and how[/b] it cracks. There's a difference between superficial cracks (that happen with every concrete job ever conceived) and Frank-Lloyd-Wright-style disastrous shear-stress fractures. These sound like shear-stress fractures.

This school has a $60million football stadium.. Meanwhile my highschool had a budget of $30million a year.. [editline]1st March 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Rangergxi;44083326]Its amazing that you can get a scholarship without knowing how to read.[/QUOTE] I literally watched this total fucking asswipe in highschool fail every single class but got pulled through all of them because he was the quarterback of the varsity team. I know it's horrible but I prayed he'd get an injury or have to stop playing football but god forbid he had to [I]learn[/I] anything

[QUOTE=JgcxCub;44088660]Played college ball ya' know.[/QUOTE] Yeah, at some cushy ivy league school. And damn, the contractors etc are going to suffer when the ball finally drops into their court.

[QUOTE=dai;44084231]*for football but nothing else because they dumped everything on football in the hopes of producing a big NFL star that would rake in lots of notoriety in order to grant them the capability to increase costs to go to the school and rake in an even higher budget for making it more desirable for families to want to move to the area[/QUOTE] That way they can make more money, and build a bigger stadium!

ah yes the Allen Eagles football stadium. I live in Plano, Texas so this was all over the news. Sucks for students in Allen because they won't be able to use that venue for graduation. You would think with the $60 million they spent on the damn thing that they would make sure the foundation was good

[QUOTE=dbk21894;44087026]and a propensity to hire shit contractors [/QUOTE] Like the US government in general.

Welcome to Texas, where we praise football nearly as much as Jesus. Thank fuck I live in Houston, I can avoid most of this shit.

[QUOTE=Craigewan;44089971]Yeah, at some cushy ivy league school. [/QUOTE] Try University of Texas!