Cracks form in McKinney's new $70M high school football stadium

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A Texas-sized high school football stadium may or may not open next school year.

The $70 million facility in McKinney is under construction. But the school district discovered cracks in the stadium in January. The cracks are in the area of the home and visitors concourse and the lower wall.

The new stadium will seat 12,000 people. It’s on a 50-acre lot near Highway 75 and 121. It was set to open in the fall.

At a school board meeting Tuesday night, McKinney ISD Chief Financial Officer Jason Bird called the cracking greater than expected. He said after an investigation by an engineering firm, those findings will be passed along to the primary contractor, Manhattan Construction, and the architectural firm, Stantec.
“Those forensic reports are a tool that will have to be used by Manhattan and by Stantec, who then come together to potentially solve whatever our issue is,” Bird said.

An engineering firm is looking at the problem. The district said the contractor and architect, not taxpayers, will pay for the repairs.

The company McKinney ISD hired to investigate the cracks is the same one that looked at the cracks at the nearby Allen Eagles Stadium.

Allen High School’s $60 million stadium opened in 2012 and one year later was closed for repairs. Design issues also caused the cracks in that case.

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