… on a story I’ve covered on this blog; and now, courtesy of Philip, a UD reader in Texas, I can do that.
I bitched back in 2012 that a high school in Texas had just built a $60 million dollar football stadium.
A high school! I was shocked. I was contemptuous of any state whose taxpayers would agree to this – I was incredulous that Texas in particular, with its pathetic secondary schools, would …
Blah blah blah. You know the drill. So what. No one cares. Let them bash their kids’ heads in. Forget about it.
But Philip wanted me to know that a mere two years after it was built, this stadium has been closed because of cracks in the concrete, and no one knows when it will reopen.
************
So now UD feels comfortable about the whole thing. Now we’re in her beloved Dada territory, where Tristan Tzara and his surrealist pals gave us exactly this sort of instruction in how to do Dada:
1. Build a sixty million dollar football stadium for a high school.
2. Immediately close it.
Absolute Dada!
Here’s how Ben Rohrbach describes it:
The voters in Katy, Texas, who recently rejected a $70 million high school football stadium proposal, must be breathing a sigh of relief after what has become one of the most expensive prep athletics facility in U.S. history built just 18 months ago by another football-crazed town four hours north on Route 45.
To put it mildly, the $60 million tax-funded Eagle Stadium that is home to the two-time defending Class 5A, Division I state champ Allen (Texas) High football program just became a disaster.
According to numerous reports out of Dallas, the state-of-the-art 18,000 seat facility has been closed to address “extensive cracking” in the concrete. The news comes less than two years after the stadium, which features a $1.3 million scoreboard and other extravagant features, opened to national fanfare.
But what about the voters in Deepshit Texas who are about to approve an $80 million high school football proposal? Stay tuned, y’all.
March 1st, 2014 at 3:02PM
It was the late Molly Ivans who had the most incisive description of her home state, that being, TX is Mississippi with good roads….
March 2nd, 2014 at 4:17PM
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/allen/headlines/20140228-architect-firm-says-design-not-to-blame-for-cracks-in-allen-eagle-stadium.ece
Here’s a shocker. The architects say it’s not their fault.
On the other hand, I really do appreciate the good roads here.
March 2nd, 2014 at 4:39PM
JND: Funny.
March 3rd, 2014 at 7:41PM
I would like to think my wife and I had something to do with the voters turning down the $69 million football stadium in Katy, TX. We posted this comment to every online news story we could find covering the local bond election:
“Sorry this is one Katy voter who doesn’t buy it. That $69 million price tag is an absolute joke. Stanford Stadium in California hosts a major college program in one of the most modern and beautiful stadiums in the country. The old stadium was completely torn down and replaced for $90 million in 2006 in one of the most expensive construction environments in the country. And it seats over 50,000.
We’re talking high school in Katy. Being built on empty land and seating 14,000. Come back with something closer to $6.9 million and we’ll talk.”
March 3rd, 2014 at 8:02PM
MikeM: Bravo.