Video: The Ford Center at The Star (Courtesy Frisco Convention & Visitors Bureau)
Frisco Independent School District to open unique indoor facility this fall.
This week, voters in the Texas city of McKinney approved a $220 million bond that dishes out $50.3 million toward the completion of a fanciful football stadium that will house three schools in its district:
McKinney,
Boyd and
McKinney North.
The new stadium will sit on a 64-acre site, seat approximately 12,000 fans and make up a big chunk of the entire bond package, which also includes an event center.
It will replace Ron Poe Stadium, which seats 7,000 fans and was built in 1962. The cost of the new stadium is actually $62.8 million and the remaining $12.5 million comes from another previous bond that passed at the start of the century (
Story).
An artist's rendering of the new stadium in McKinney.
Image courtesy of McKinney ISD
This comes four years after Allen — just a few miles north of McKinney — unveiled its amazing $60 million Eagle Stadium, which MaxPreps visited for the 2015 season opener (
Story).
Another 15 miles from Allen is Frisco, where the
mother lode of all facilities should be ready for the start of the 2016 season.
The Ford Center at The Star, a product of Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys, is scheduled to open late in the summer and be ready to host a quadruple-header, featuring all eight teams in the Frisco Independent School District. That event is scheduled for the first Saturday of the football season.
Those schools are
Frisco,
Centennial,
Liberty,
Wakeland,
Heritage,
Lone Star,
Independence and
Reedy. A ninth high school — Lebanon — is scheduled to open in the fall.
The indoor stadium is part of a — get this — $1 billion development that includes office space, a fitness club, two outdoor practice fields for the Cowboys, shopping, a sports medical center and a hotel.
The stadium will feature a nearly 60-foot wide video screen and seat 12,000 fans evenly divided between both sides. It sits right on top of the action and has been described as a mini AT&T Stadium.
The Ford Center itself is priced at more than $250 million. Beyond being the practice facility for the Cowboys, high school games featuring the eight teams in the district will be played regularly on Thursday and Friday nights.
Furthermore, it is able to host soccer games as well.
It's believed to be the first partnership between an NFL team and a high school district.
An end zone look from Eagle Stadium on the campus of Allen High School.
File photo by Mitch Stephens
