Williamsville, N.Y. (WBEN) - Buffalo Pro Soccer continues its efforts to bring professional soccer to Western New York, with a team slated to begin play in the USL Championship league in 2027.
Over the last several months, the group has been garnering community support at events like Town Hall meetings, taking suggestions on a number of different topics for the future club. Those meetings have largely taken place in the City of Buffalo, where the team hopes to soon secure a site for a new soccer stadium.
This time, though, Buffalo Pro Soccer is branching its input on the organization out further into the suburbs surrounding Buffalo.
"This club needs to represent more than just the City of Buffalo, or people who are able to get to the City of Buffalo on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night, which is typically when we hold them. We want to go out, get to different areas throughout Western New York, different suburbs," said president Peter Marlette Jr. with WBEN on Tuesday. "Williamsville has an amazing youth high school soccer scene, everything like that. So it seems like a good spot to get to, and engage with people who are based out there or working around there."
Back in July, Buffalo Pro Soccer announced it was pulling out of an original agreement for a new 7,600-seat soccer stadium to be located at Elk and Lee Street. The group cited "an inability to work through disputes relating to the operation of the neighboring PVS Chemicals facility."
Now the group feels they are getting close to firmly announcing a new site to build a new stadium.
"When we walked away from that previous site, there were already a couple sites, as we talked about, that we had done all of our homework on. We had all the initial conversations and then elected to go with our previous site. But that work didn't go away. We have expanded on that. We've had some environmental studies done recently on sites," Marlette Jr. said.
While Marlette Jr. admits the group has the information needed to make a decision, they want to keep doing homework to make sure the right location is chosen. It's also about coming to the best agreement to ensure the long-term success of the club.
"Without getting into the specifics of the sites themselves, the City of Buffalo is definitely the favored location. We hear that in our Town Halls constantly," Marlette Jr. noted. "We did a survey about a year-and-a-half ago, which was an open, public survey, it got 2,000-plus respondents, and the City of Buffalo absolutely was the favored location."
Wherever Buffalo Pro Soccer decides to build its new stadium, Marlette Jr. fully understands that the facility needs to become a community asset.
"We're not building this stadium to host 20-to-40 soccer games a year. This needs to be a concert venue, needs to be an event venue. Needs to host lacrosse, rugby, football when the time is right, potentially outdoor hockey. This needs to be a multi-purpose venue, and it will be a multi-purpose venue," he said.
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