Dan Hunt still remembers what it was like working with his late father Lamar Hunt, and his brother Clark Hunt, to bring the first iteration of Toyota Stadium to life in Frisco. “It was always amazing seeing my dad sketch things out at home,” Hunt said.
Mark Williams, HKS Architects’ global sector director of venues, also recalls working alongside Lamar Hunt on the stadium. “He was a fascinating man with a wealth of knowledge,” Williams said. “He cared deeply about his teams and the fans of his teams. He was always thinking about how to make the experience better for his players while also prioritizing the 20,000 people that come to watch the games—and having them be deeply connected to the sport of soccer. That was at the heart and soul of every discussion we had.”
It’s that kind of spirit that the Hunt family, FC Dallas, HKS, and Manhattan Construction Group are trying to bring into renovations for Toyota Stadium. A $182 million revamp will commence in January 2025 with plans to deliver an updated stadium by 2028.
When the stadium first opened in Frisco in 2005, the Dallas North Tollway had not yet extended into the area—the municipality was still using service roads. Hunt recalls difficult attendance numbers in its early days, to which the FC Dallas president says was economy-related.
Over the two decades since, soccer in DFW has grown immensely. In 2018, the team, alongside the United States Soccer Federation, opened the National Soccer Hall of Fame, a roughly $58 million endeavor. In 2022, Arlington was named a host city for the 2026 World Cup and a year later AT&T Stadium secured nine matches for the tournament. Hunt, who chaired the region’s bid for the World Cup, has hopes that one of the national teams to select Toyota Stadium as a training facility during the World Cup. As for regular season FC Dallas activity: Saturday, Oct. 19 marked the 17th sellout of the season. The team had 11 sellouts last year.
North Texas is no stranger to luxury sports facilities. The construction costs of AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field combine to be $2.5 billion—with hundreds of millions of dollars continuing to pour into AT&T Stadium renovations. As Hunt puts it, now is the right time to bring Toyota Stadium to that level. “We have the fan base now, and with so many people moving here, really, since the pandemic, and the continued growth in this market, it’s ready for this luxury offering,” Hunt said.
Renovations will result in 58 suites with the capability to increase to 80—a large number even compared to the bigger stadiums in Europe, Hunt notes. There are also plans for 6,000 club seats, also a larger number. Plans propose a 175 percent increase in club seating capacity and modern club spaces on the east and west sides of the stadium offering elevated food, beverage, and entertainment. Hunt shared plans for two state-of-the-art club spaces: one will be pub-themed, and the other will be “western meets soccer.”
A rendering of the east club planned for Toyota Stadium
“There’s a lot of great lessons to be taken from what the Joneses have done at AT&T Stadium,” Hunt said. “They have a gigantic video board, they have more suites than anybody else, they have as many club seats as a couple of the big buildings, like SoFi and MetLife. So they’re good lessons, and they’re things that we’ve learned with the Kansas City Chiefs over the years at Arrowhead as we continue to redo it. We’re looking at what the future of Arrowhead Stadium is going to look like for us, whether we renovate or build a brand new building there.”
The changes will open the door for the return of concerts at Toyota Stadium, too, Hunt said. The stadium is used to flexing its uses beyond soccer, hosting sold-out FCS Championship games and Frisco ISD high school football games, as well as college football postseason bowl game the Frisco Bowl. Hunt sees opportunity for more with the renovations. “I would love for us to have another bowl game,” he says. “I’d love for us to have a kickoff classic in the new building. I’d love for us to have an HBCU game here. I think that would be a fantastic thing to have.”
There are also high hopes for dark-day space rentals, which Hunt foresees being significantly higher post-renovations. Including games and ancillary programming, the stadium currently hosts over 200 events annually. With additional programming, Hunt sees that increasing to north of 300 after 2028.
“It’s scalable, capacity wise and size wise,” Williams said. “It’s flexible in that rooms can become clubs and become meeting rooms and speaking areas and have a host of things happen in them. And then the seating bowl can transform itself into different capacities and configurations.”
Design Drivers
Williams says the comfort of the fan has driven design—a roof structure will extend to cover seats on all four sides of the stadium.
There are plans to create ceremonial, celebratory entries from multiple sides of the building in an effort to disperse patrons and avoid bottlenecking. Wider concourses, as well as a 59 percent increase in point of sale concessions and a 26 percent increase in restrooms throughout the venue will add to that effort.
Plans include new audio and video technology, as well as new scoreboards, video signage and a state-of-the-art sound system. Williams says that upgrade will impact both in-person audiences and the larger fan base that is tuning in to watch the game on the TV.
“The stadium has always been a front-runner in the MLS, and I think patrons have gone in there and loved the experiences of being in that stadium,” Williams said. “But there were things like their comfort and the ratios of the convenience of getting merchandise or the convenience of getting food and beverage that can always be elevated. And we did that.”
The renovation, planned to be done in phases, is slated to be delivered in 2028. “It’s going to be transformational for the MLS,” Williams said. “It’s going to be transformational for the city of Frisco, and it’s going to be especially transformational for all the fans and the patrons that walk into this building.”
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