LAMAR HUNT: It looks terrific

Lamar Hunt, who funded the construction of Columbus Crew Stadium, MLS's first soccer-specific stadium when it opened in 1999, celebrates the unveiling of his FC Dallas' Pizza Hut Park on Saturday.

SOCCER AMERICA: Pizza Hut Park opens on Saturday night. Although the work is not yet completed, what will be going through your mind?
LAMAR HUNT: What I'll be thinking about is pride in the finished product and at the same time it's going to be about three or four months before the finished product is really there.
It's very encouraging how terrific it looks. The restrooms and concessions will be 75 percent finished for this game this week and that's why we're limiting the capacity to 75 percent – 15,000 – because we didn't want a situation where we weren't able to serve people that were there.
 
SA: This facility, with the youth fields, is much different than Columbus Crew Stadium and Home Depot Center, with its training facilities, has a persona all its own. Will the Frisco model be duplicated anywhere?
LH: No two are going to be exactly alike, because Frisco has a dynamic nature to it that's very special. It's still a small city – they only have 77,000 people – but as recently as 1990 they only had 3,000. It will be built out to a capacity of a quarter-million people within 15 years. There's no stopping the growth here, it doesn't seem.
It's the type of identity we've not had before. It was hard to have that identity playing in the Cotton Bowl or one year we played at Southlake, that was not a good situation.
It's exceeded any expectations I would have had in the quality of the facility. We've been awfully fortunate to have HKS, the architectural firm, which has done an outstanding job. I can't say enough positive things about their contribution to the project.
Frankly, one of the reasons we selected them was not only for their expertise but they are right here in downtown Dallas and their office is about eight blocks from our own Hunt Sports Group. That made it a natural for us to be able to work with them and now they have the potential of several other soccer complexes they are working on.
 
SA: You were discussing a similar complex to be built in the city of McKinney, but a reversal by the city council terminated that deal. At what point did Frisco become involved?
LH: It didn't happen overnight. We were encouraged a meeting at which the city manager of Frisco was in attendance. His name was George Purefoy. Before the meeting was over, he passed me a note – he was sitting two seats away – that said he thought he had some real potential and we should try to meet privately.
We did and had a further conversation and he was really instrumental in getting the thing rolling. He knew things that we didn't know, like the fact that the Frisco ISD [Independent School District] was about to build an $18 million football stadium. So fairly easily this project morphed from that and they put that money in the stadium in a different form and they have the right to play there. The stadium is designed to house the games of their high school teams.
One adjacent field is dedicated to Frisco for their junior high football and soccer games. It's a 600-seat facility that has its own restrooms and concession stands and scoreboard. It's fenced in and the district can charge admission.
 
SA: Hunt Sports Group also paid for a concert stage to be built at one end of the stadium. How much use will it have?
LH: We have built a permanent concert stage at one end of the stadium and that will enable us to have, we estimate, between six and eight concerts a year. We won't have to put a stage on the field. That was quite a large investment to do that, about a couple of million dollars.
It gives us the flexibility to, as an example, play a soccer game there Saturday night and have a concert Sunday night. So many times in the big stadiums like Arrowhead or even Home Depot Center they've caused some damage to their field by putting a stage on it. HSG made the investment and they've given us management of the facility for three 20-year terms, 20-years plus two 20-year options, so I think it's going to be something that may be done in other cities.
We've made a partnership arrangement with AEG.  They're going to be our concert provider for six to eight events a year.
 
SA: Combing the youth soccer interests with those of the professional game seems to be a natural fit. Why has it taken so long for a project of this type to be done?
LH: It isn't easy to put all of the ingredients together and one of the key things is this is the first time there's been a real, significant governmental body participation. In our case, it's Collin County and the City of Frisco, the Frisco Economic Development group and the Frisco Independent School District. Those bodies, and Hunt Sports Group, obviously, put money into the project, and that has helped make it work.
It gives us the ability to control all the revenue streams. Obviously there are a lot of cost obligations involved, taking care of 18 soccer fields instead of one is a big bite to chew off but it gives us the opportunity to sell a naming-rights sponsorship and we're very fortunate Pizza Hut has stepped up there for a long-term commitment.
 
SA: Did the idea of building your own stadiums ever arise in the days of the North American Soccer League? Your team, the Dallas Tornado, was one of many teams who played in different facilities.
LH: I don't remember anybody talking about building their own stadiums. The Dallas Tornado did play at Ownby Stadium on the SMU campus and that was a number of years into the league.
We'd struggled. We'd played at a minor league baseball stadium, we played in a high school stadium, we played at Texas Stadium and the Cotton Bowl, and ultimately we settled at Ownby and made an investment of about a million dollars in improvement. SMU wasn't playing football then. That's the closest anybody came to it that I can remember.
Nobody thought of anything as venturesome as Home Depot Center or what's now Pizza Hut Park or Crew Stadium. I don't know if it just didn't dawn on people or it was too much of a financial bite to chew off. Probably the latter.
 
SA: As happy as you'll be when it opens, it must frustrate you to limit capacity until all work is completed.
LH: It is an awkward situation. Usually when a stadium isn't not finished it's because some of the seats are not finished. In our case, the seats are in, but we don't have the restrooms and concessions ready.
It almost breaks your heart because you can only have one opening game but it will be spectacular anyway.