{"id":208076,"date":"2026-06-02T04:18:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T04:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208076\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T04:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T04:18:20","slug":"allentown-planners-approve-elevated-stadium-for-charter-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208076\/","title":{"rendered":"Allentown planners approve elevated stadium for charter school"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A new stadium soon could pop up in the shadow of Allentown\u2019s Coca-Cola Park.<\/p>\n<p>Allentown City Planning Commission on Tuesday granted approval to Executive Education Academy\u2019s request to build a multisport stadium with more than 4,000 seats. <\/p>\n<p>The stadium is set to cover more than 125,000 square feet of the school\u2019s parking lot, which neighbors that of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. <\/p>\n<p>The new stadium is designed to be &#8220;on stilts&#8221; \u2014 elevated by concrete columns and shear walls that resist lateral forces and prevent buildings from warping or collapsing.<\/p>\n<p>All but about two dozen parking spaces in that area of the lot would remain usable \u2014 under the stadium.<\/p>\n<p>    Building the stadium on concrete columns is &#8220;the only option.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Executive Education Academy charter school official<\/p>\n<p>The charter school and the IronPigs are set to \u201cclosely coordinate\u201d all events, so their lots are not used at the same time, according to Robert Lysek, the charter school\u2019s chief executive officer.<\/p>\n<p>That deal came after IronPigs co-owner and managing partner Joe Finley <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lehighvalleynews.com\/school-news\/charter-schools-stadium-plan-idled-over-ironpigs-parking-concerns\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">raised concerns last month about losing parking spaces<\/a> if the stadium moved forward.<\/p>\n<p>Executive Education Academy expects to incur significant extra costs to build the stadium \u201cvertically,\u201d a school official said Tuesday. \u201cBut it\u2019s the only option.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The charter school must provide city officials with a detailed plan of how they will manage events at the proposed stadium.<\/p>\n<p>But the commission dropped a requirement for a full traffic study after Finley and Lysek\u2019s agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Executive Education Academy is set to demolish one of its buildings on a different property to offset additional paving at the stadium site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 A new stadium soon could pop up in the shadow of Allentown\u2019s Coca-Cola Park. Allentown&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,91466,91467,91465,121,120,283,91468,91469,91470],"class_list":["post-208076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-charter-new-stadium","tag-allentown-charter-school","tag-allentown-executive-education-academy","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-planning","tag-executive-education-charter-new-stadium","tag-is-executive-education-charter-building-a-new-stadium","tag-new-stadium-near-coca-cola-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}