Orchard Park, N.Y. (WBEN/WGR 550) - Construction continues on site of the new Highmark Stadium, the future home of the Buffalo Bills set to be completed ahead of the 2026 NFL season along Abbott Road.
For anyone that may find themselves around the construction site in the Town of Orchard Park, you may catch a quick glimpse of the work ongoing and notice the lower bowl of the stadium starting to come to life with the steelwork.
According to Paul Brown, President of the Buffalo and Niagara Building Trades Councils and member of the Erie County Stadium Corporation (ECSC) Board of Directors, construction of the new stadium is actually ahead of schedule.
"I don't know how much ahead, but we're way ahead of schedule of where we're supposed to be, and we're manning the job very well," said Brown in an interview with WBEN. "It's very safe, and things seem to be very good."
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Perhaps no body has a better upfront view of stadium construction in-and-around the site than Eric "Hammer" Matwijow, who own's "Hammer's Lot" adjacent to the construction pit. He, too, has noticed progress being a bit ahead of schedule.
"A lot of activity has picked up in the last two weeks with all the steel being erected, and the concrete panels put in there, and the backs of the steel, the staircases, sheet metal being put down, they're going to pour concrete on that obviously for the walkway. They started on the North side, that activity's mainly with the steel, and now on the South side, they're doing a lot of the foundation work, and really the activity has really cranked up," said Matwijow in an interview with WBEN. "Basically, we have either a stone truck or a dump truck coming in one a minute, and other supply trucks also. It's very, very, very busy here."
While the nicer and milder winter weather was a nice extra boost for construction efforts around the new stadium site, Brown says the true credit for work being ahead of schedule should go to the crews putting the work in.
"The trades that are there now, they're pretty tough. They're not prima donnas, they're used to work in that weather," he said. "They did the Harborcenter in the middle of the winter, I don't know how they did it. They're tough, they know what they're doing, and they can handle it. So weather-wise, yeah, it was a pretty mild winter, but it wouldn't have mattered. These guys, they can do it. They're great. They're amazingly good."
With the steelwork at the new stadium being visible to the naked eye, Brown and Matwijow says they've noticed a little more excitement from the public in-and-around the construction site.
"Mainly on the weekends, because the traffic is pretty crazy with the dump trucks coming down, the big tandem trucks. I think people realize not to be around as much during the week," Matwijow noted. "Some of the guys are actually working on Saturdays here, not all the crews, but there's still activity here. So Sunday is the better day, there's less activity, as such, with the equipment coming in. We really haven't seen any accidents at all, but you just never know. So anybody who's going to come around, do it on a Sunday. It'd be best."
Matwijow has also made it a point to be active on social media with any prominent activity or action taking place in the construction pit.
"I've been doing posts since the beginning of the stadium. At times, there's a really dead time where there's really no activity going for two, three weeks, it's the same thing over-and-over. So I've tried to take pictures and put them out there [with the] hashtag '#StadiumConstruction', there's a couple other people doing the same thing," he said. "When I see an activity going at, I might do a cluster of photos and stuff, usually take them on a Sunday when there's no equipment running around."
Despite being ahead of schedule in construction, to this point, Brown adds crews on site will continue to work at a good pace, but not try to rush anything to continue working ahead of the expected pace.
"I mean, who knows what could happen six months from now, a year from now. It's a long project, so can't look too far ahead," Brown said. "But I think that no matter what, we're showing that we can do this job. People were concerned about it, and I think we're showing that we can definitely handle it with no problem."
