Cracks Delay Opening of $70M McKinney HS Stadium

McKinney (Texas) Independent School District said last week that it will have to delay the opening of its $70 million football stadium due to cracks in the facility’s foundation.

According to the Dallas NBC affiliate, the school found cracks in the home concourse, visitor concourse, and home and visitor concourse lower bowl wall areas.

During a school board meeting last Tuesday, McKinney ISD chief financial officer Jason Bird said the cracking was “greater than anticipated” and said that he wasn’t able to put a timeframe on when the problem would be fixed. "The reality is I cannot tell you when it is going to be," Bird told the board. "I will tell you that every effort is in place. These guys right behind me are absolutely efforting as much as you can possibly ask in order to find and finish the investigative process in order to figure out what needs to be done, if anything, with each one of our concerns."

The school district has hired a third-party forensic engineer to determine he cause of the cracking and how to fix the issues. Manhattan Construction Company and Stantec, the architecture firm behind the project, have indicated they will bear the responsibility of repairs.

"As we navigate through the final challenges of this historic project, the residents of McKinney can rest assured Manhattan will deliver as promised," said Mark Penny, senior vice president of Manhattan Construction in a statement released Friday. "Once complete, the new stadium for MISD will be something the entire McKinney community will be proud of. Manhattan has a long history of delivering exceptional projects for their customers. We can assure the people of McKinney the new stadium will not be an exception to that tradition."