PHOTOS: Stadium construction progressing well in Orchard Park

Orchard Park, N.Y. (WBEN) - Construction of the new Highmark Stadium along Abbott Road in Orchard Park continues to progress nicely nearly a year since ground broke on the massive project to build a state-of-the-art football-first facility for the Buffalo Bills come the 2026 season.

John Polka, Vice President of Stadium Development for the Bills, says construction efforts are right where they wanted them to be at this time.

"We're still working through structural steel, wrapping up foundation. We should be just about wrapped up with the final foundations for the structural steel, so working through that," said Polka in an interview with WBEN. "Setting precast concrete stadia, which are the concrete sections that the seats will actually go on, and working our way up to the top of the steel."

If one was to drive past the stadium site in Orchard Park, they can see the exoskeleton of the new stadium currently going up with several steel beams coming from the construction pit. Polka and others working closely on the stadium estimate the steel is about a third of the way erected in the tallest part of construction to date, which is the North end of the structure.

Polka says stadium construction is "comfortably" on schedule, because there's always the possibility crews can lose time in construction faster than they can make it up.

"We get a little bit of bad weather, we hit a little bit of a complication, something comes up. You can lose time pretty quickly, but things are going really well," Polka noted. "We had a good winter, and our construction management team and partners are doing a good job keeping us on schedule."

At this time a year ago, the site of the new Highmark Stadium across the street from the current stadium was nothing but an empty lot with the asphalt torn up in preparation to begin major excavation work. Polka admits his amazement with how far things have come to this point.

"We were staring at a big hole in the ground a year ago. It's incredible to see it come up, and as we walk around, you can actually see the stadium. The things that we've been talking about, the things we've been showing fans, you can actually start to see now in the stadium construction, which is really exciting," he said.

And this progress comes with construction efforts not even at the halfway point yet in Orchard Park.

"We're just finishing foundations, we're just putting up structural steel, and we're just starting to put the precast stadia panels in. There's a ton of fit out, there's a ton of finishes, there are a ton of fixtures and furniture that goes into this building. So yeah, we're just scratching the surface on what's happening out there," Polka said.

More from WBEN's interview with Polka will be published soon...