Orchard Park, N.Y. (WBEN) - Despite renderings of the new Bills stadium being released this Thursday, there was a modest showing of Orchard Park residents who attended the second and final public hearing meeting for additional comments on the new Bills stadium.
In addition, the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR) for the new Bills stadium is now complete, which requires governmental agencies to evaluate potential environmental impacts of a project before they can make any decisions relative to undertaking a project funding a project or approving a project, according to Kim Nason, an attorney of Phillips Lytle working with Erie County through the SEQR process.
Nason further explains, "The action for purposes of SEQR that triggers this whole process is funding, certain funding and permitting that's going to be performed by Erie County. In addition, the project involves the transfer of property, about 242 acres that's currently owned by the county to the Erie County Stadium Corporation, which is a state agency, which will then be leased to the team to facilitate the project."
Here's what we know about the stadium:
- The stadium will seat approximately 60,000 people.
- The stadium will measure approximately 1.35 million overall in square feet.
- The stadium will be more compact, but taller.
- The targeted opening date is 2026.
Currently in the SEQR process, all comments from the original scoping meeting on July 14th were complied and reviewed, with responses compiled all on the website for the SEQR. The team has also compiled what they refer to as a technical addendum, which has many reviews and studies including a noise study, a traffic study and assessment, demolition mitigation, water and sanity sewer reports and more.
Related
"One of the things we did as part of this environmental review process was reduce the traffic management plan for game day to a written plan. With the idea being that when there's a new stadium, it will be very easy to update that regularly, both before and after the season. So it becomes kind of a a tool, if you will to help improve traffic management on game day," says Adam Walters of Phillips Lytle.
Ryan Brown, a Bills fan in Amherst during public comment said he appreciated that there is a plan for game day public transit incorporated.
Many Bills fans who spoke said that they appreciate seeing the renderings and are excited for the stadium to come, "They're spectacular," said Rich Whipple of Amherst.
"The rendering is absolutely beautiful," says William Tyrell, who's house will be directly across the street from the new stadium, who is concerned about the size of the ditches and sidewalks that will take a majority of his front lawn.
"I really appreciate the little historical reference with regard to the vertical panes on there. You know, certainly a nod to Kleinhans Music Hall perhaps and Memorial Auditorium and War Memorial Stadium. I think with the vertical pillars there, there's some representation that people are really going to appreciate," says Whipple.
Whipple does have concerns, "I wasn't sure if there was going to be a net reduction of parking or not. I think the fans would probably want to know that. With the lower attendance, there would seem to be a lot more parking spaces available and if you're going to make the stadium out of a parking lot, anyways, there should be maybe a net increase in parking spaces."
He also mentioned there should be some monument or memorialization to commemorate where the old stadium was. Many in attendance appeared to agree with that comment.
Erie County Legislator John Mills was also in attendance for hearing. He reiterated what he said during the public scope meeting in July on public safety, "I'm glad you put together a traffic plan, but I'd like it to be able to expand that to include other events that are going to take place at that stadium, including concerts and other events in general and I think that'll just enhance what we're trying to do here now."
"How are we going to handle the 10,000 workers that we anticipate coming to this site over the next four years to build that stadium?" Mills asks. He would like to see a plan for construction traffic and machinery in addition to the traffic studies conducted.
Donald Lorentz, Executive Director from Orchard Park Chamber of Commerce vocalized that his team has had no conversation with the Bills or anybody on whether or not they are going to get any revenue from the deal aside from a moderate influx of traffic from visitors for businesses in the area. Given that this stadium is being paid with tax dollars, Lorentz feels businesses in the area should benefit more from the deal, especially since they haven't received any revenue from the stadium at this point.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz was very appreciative of the comments, "These comments will be incorporated and will be responded to as part of the final document which is provided to the legislature. We think it's important to hear from the public. There was some interesting things said here today, including from Erie Matwijow, Owner of Hammer's Lot who thought that the numbers were in appropriate for his lot (in relation to amount of cars per acre lots can hold). That's why we have public comments to hear from the public. The renderings, at least the first initial renderings that came out, [there] seems to be a great response from the public as to what those renderings look like, they are subject to change."
Poloncarz says that the process of the stadium deal is coming along nicely and significant progress has been made recently.
You can still submit comments to the SEQR website until November 2nd.
See the players below for the full hearing as well as further comments on progression from the County Executive Mark Poloncarz: