Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown threw a bucket of ice-cold water on talk of a downtown football stadium on Thursday, for the first time saying a new facility should be in Orchard Park.
"It looks to me, from everything I’ve read, everything I’ve heard, all of the discussions that I’ve been a part of, that the best, the smartest, the safest place to build a new stadium is in Orchard Park," Brown said at a meeting of a local real estate group.
Brown said the priority should be to keep the Bills in Western New York and not put the team at risk of leaving altogether. He said that could happen if the process became too complicated, too long and too expensive for team owners Terry and Kim Pegula to bear.
"The stadium being built in Orchard Park in the early '70s is considered one of the great planning mistakes of this region. But some mistakes that are over 50 years old, it’s hard to undo those mistakes," Brown said.
"I think it’s critically important that we keep the Bills in Erie County. They are the Buffalo Bills," he added.
Brown's remarks to the Western New York State Commercial Association of Realtors was his clearest statement that the stadium would not be going in the city.
The Common Council and some business leaders have spoken out in favor of a downtown location, and the Council even held a public hearing on the subject, while also lobbying hard for a seat at the negotiating table.
Many pointed out that the current stadium has been no great economic boon for Orchard Park but it could be a game changer for Buffalo, the only major Rust Belt city with no downtown stadium.
But Brown has avoided taking a firm stance until now, and it was not a major issue during the mayoral election campaign.
"I would love for it to be able to go downtown, but there are a lot of obstacles that could potentially put keeping the team in our community at risk, and I don’t want to see that," he said in an interview after his remarks.
"The first priority, I think, is securing the team for the long-term in Buffalo, and I think it becomes more complicated to do that by pushing a city location that has a lot of challenges," he said.
Those challenges include:
- The need to uproot residents and businesses, and take property. "To plop the stadium down, even though it could fit in a dense urban area like that, we believe will displace hundreds of residents. It will displace businesses," Brown said.
- The extra time. "It could take two to three years longer to build a stadium in downtown Buffalo than it will take in Orchard Park," he said.
- The extra cost of as much as $1 billion to build downtown because of higher infrastructure, property acquisition and other costs associated with a city site.
- The traffic. He noted that when the city was faced years ago with several events at the same time – at KeyBank Center, the Buffalo & Erie County Naval and Military Park and the giant duck that visited Canalside - "you couldn't move in downtown Buffalo. It was almost impossible."
"When there are 18,000 people going to the arena, the traffic can get very congested. It can get very tough getting in there, and very tough getting out of there," Brown told the crowd. "Take 60,000 people coming to the stadium for a football game all at one time. That’s going to be challenging."
The mayor also said the city has no role in the negotiations.
"The stadium talks clearly are between the State of New York, the County of Erie and the Bills organization," he said. "The city, since the stadium moved out to Orchard Park, has had no financial investment in the stadium."
