The Upside of Going Upscale

The Stephen G. Terrell Recreation Center — a $54 million, 149,000-square-foot facility in Allen, Texas — opened in January 2024 and is now a central hub for health, wellness, recreation and art on the city’s underserved west side. But wait: A $54 million municipal recreation center?

You better believe it — once all fees and expenses beyond construction costs were factored.

And you can expect to see others with similar construction budgets in the coming years, too.

“It’s becoming more common, which is interesting,” says Kevin Armstrong, a principal at Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture and the lead project manager on the Allen facility, which was featured in AB’s 2025 Architectural Showcase. “If we take ourselves back to before COVID, this was a very robust budget for a facility. But we’re seeing multiple municipal projects now with construction budgets north of $45 million. We’re doing one in Castle Rock, Colo., that is around $61 million, and we even have a project in Grand Forks, N.D., that is heading toward $80 million.”

One big reason, Armstrong says, is a greater push from community leaders to create an enhanced quality of life for current residents, as well as people considering relocating to the area.

Allen, an affluent suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and home to the Allen Independent School District football stadium that opened in 2012 to nationwide attention at a staggering cost of $60 million, has a population pushing 120,000. Besides the Stephen G. Terrell Recreation Center, the city’s most recent recreation facility was built in the early 2000s. While the established and well-developed east side of the city is served by multiple smaller and more traditional recreation centers, local officials expect future growth on Allen’s burgeoning west side. The new rec center should meet those expectations for years to come.

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