The Star is home to the Cowboys' corporate HQ, practice fields, hotels, restaurants, shops and moreTHE STAR IN FRISCO
Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones has built the team a "genuine capital" in the form of The Star in Frisco, according to architecture critic Mark Lamster of the DALLAS MORNING NEWS. The facility is a "shimmering football Oz that emerges like a spectral vision from the blank canvas of North Texas." It is a "miniature city, a 91-acre branded corporate headquarters and entertainment complex dedicated to football, consumption and -- above all -- profit." The architectural language is "unapologetically modern." It is a "city of reflective surfaces, of glass and metal and white concrete that dazzles in the sun, and it is blessedly free of the kitschy, nostalgic elements common to sports design." Virtually all public spaces "have a corporate sponsor attached." To the north, above Cowboys Way, is "what we might call the Football Zone." The Cowboys' corporate HQ is in this area, "as are its outdoor practice fields, an indoor field house, an Omni Hotel and a Baylor Scott & White sports medical center." To the south is the Commercial Zone, an "unenclosed mall with some 20 restaurants and high-end retail establishments." That there are "significant design differences between the two zones is attributable to the fact that they are the work of different architects." The facility's designer Gensler has done a "superior job." The "focal point" of its design is the Tostitos Championship Plaza, a 50-yard artificial turf football field "created as a public square" for concerts and events. It is the "most successful" part of the design, although it "would be more so if there were a more intimate relationship with the southern zone" (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 7/21).
