Clear eyes, full hearts and a $94 million Texas high school stadium – By Amanda Albright, Eniola Longe and Julie Fine (Bloomberg) / Nov 4, 2023
(Bloomberg) — Few towns represent the Texas ethos of Friday Night Lights – and the big money behind it – more than the Dallas exurb of Prosper.
Spectators gather at a stadium with 12,000 seats, a two-story press box, fancy digs for college scouts and a 60-foot-wide video scoreboard – a venue that cost about $50 million. These high school football games don’t always fill the seats, but a local hospital chain paid $2.5 million for the stadium’s naming rights anyway. It’s all for the glory of a bunch of teenagers.
When the stadium opened four years ago, it was a state-of-the-art facility that underscored the region’s transformation from farmland to one of the fastest-growing districts in Texas.
But it may soon just be the second-most expensive stadium in the Prosper Independent School District. On Nov. 7, voters will consider a whopping $2.8 billion bond package, including $94 million for a new 8,000-seat venue that could be the costliest in Texas history. It’s part of the continued buildout from the red-hot growth over the past few years that gave Dallas the biggest population increase of any metro area in the country in 2022 as people flocked there for cheaper housing, lower taxes and rapid job growth.
