On a day Buffalo Bills fans could use any reason to smile, Gov. Kathy Hochul might be providing it.
During a meeting with the editorial board of The Buffalo News, Hochul sounded a note of optimism over negotiations for a new football stadium that would replace the Bills' current home. But a day after one of the most heartbreaking losses in the team's history, the Buffalo-born governor made clear that this game also will not be over until it is over.
All parties involved – the state, Erie County and the NFL team’s representatives – have indicated they’re approaching a deal, despite passing the Dec. 31 deadline long established by the Buffalo Bills.
“I’m not going to spike the football just yet,” Hochul told The News' editorial board in a Jan. 24 meeting. “But I feel confident that people know this is an important priority of mine.”
The “people” to whom Hochul refers are New York legislators, who will need to approve the inclusion of stadium funding in the state budget, which is due April 1.
That gives Hochul more than two months to land a deal, and it also coincides with the timeline of the NFL owners, who meet in the last week of March and would need to approve a deal.
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"There have been significant discussions over the last two weeks," Poloncarz said at his weekly news briefing. "That I will not deny. But we are not imminent to a deal."
“I will be able to work with the legislators to get what I need done through the budget,” Hochul said.
But the negotiation timeline is already three weeks beyond what Bills officials preferred.
The state has been engaged in regular negotiations with the Bills and Erie County over the last few months to reach a financing agreement for a $1.4 billion facility to be built across the street from Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park. A team official said in late October that if the key component of an agreement were reached by Dec. 31, then a new stadium could be built and open in time for the 2026 season.
Both Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz affirmed in the fall that reaching the framework of a deal by the end of 2021 was possible. But Hochul also acknowledged another option, and it is the one now being pursued: New York’s budget, which is proposed by the governor and then negotiated with the legislature, must be approved by the state Assembly and Senate before April 1.
“It’ll be done by March 31,” Hochul said. “That’s the date for our budget. We’re in conversations with the Bills and they understand the process. They’re not getting anxious.”
The negotiations are down to money – or, more specifically, finances plus politics and perceptions and timing.
Representatives from Pegula Sports and Entertainment, the management company that oversees the holdings of Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula, declined to comment Monday. But they have previously emphasized the urgency of finalizing a deal to replace the existing stadium, which is nearly 49 years old and, in the next five to six years, would likely need expensive repairs, including an overhaul of its upper deck, to remain viable.
The Bills’ lease for Highmark Stadium, which was negotiated a decade ago, expires after next season.
“We have one year left on our lease,” Pegula Sports’ Executive Vice President Ron Raccuia told The News in October. “We have a current stadium that has structural deficiencies, and this has been kicked down the road going back a decade or more.”
Team officials have made clear that they won’t sign a short-term extension of the lease without a deal in place for a new stadium. It is unclear whether a 2026 opening for new stadium remains a possibility, though team officials have not said otherwise.
To Raccuia’s point about stadium discussions getting “kicked down the road,” the possibility of building a new stadium was brought up in the 2012 lease negotiations, but the team’s then-owner and founder, the late Ralph C. Wilson Jr., preferred to renovate the current facility and leave the decision on a new one to the next owner. The Pegulas, who bought the Bills after Wilson’s death in 2014, have studied new stadium possibilities for years, including commissioning a study about four years ago that was concluded in 2019, updated in 2021 and hints at their vision for an open-air venue.
The report includes images attributed to Populous of what an imagined new stadium could look like in each of the sites it reviewed.
Hochul has agreed to both the Bills’ preference for a stadium with no roof and to locating the new venue in Orchard Park. In November, she released a state study that pinned the price of an Orchard Park stadium near the Bills’ own projection of $1.4 billion, and estimated that a stadium on the outskirts of downtown could cost in excess of $2 billion.
“We did ask them to entertain downtown” Hochul said. “That was just part of a thoughtful approach to the study that was being done, because there was interest.”
The Buffalo region is the NFL’s second-smallest market, behind only Green Bay, a factor in negotiations that Hochul acknowledged in her meeting with The News.
“I know that they are a very valuable asset,” she said. “For them to be in a market as small as Buffalo is rather extraordinary, and I don’t take that for granted. That’s why I have to work out a deal that is beneficial to them, knowing that there is other competition out there. I’m aware of that, and it is something that I lie awake and think about sometimes.”
Hochul referred to reports from last summer describing the possibility that the Bills could move to a larger market if a stadium deal doesn’t happen.
The three sides agree on two major points: A new venue needs to be built to replace 48-year-old Highmark Stadium, and both the Bills and the government need to help pay for it. But the sticking points are complicated.
“There are other cities that were making at least a play for the Bills, and I’m very cognizant of that,” Hochul said.
Among the oft-speculated possibilities for a relocation are Austin or San Antonio, as well as San Diego.
“I’m committed to making sure they stay here, but it has to be something that is smart for the taxpayers, as well,” Hochul said. “We’ll do our very best to accomplish that, and I believe we will achieve it.”
All sides want the same thing: The Bills playing in Western New York over the next few decades in a newly built venue. But even if everyone involved wants to make that happen, it's tough to pull off.
Like all sides involved in the stadium negotiations, Hochul did not reveal specifics of the talks or a potential timeline for a deal, other than the March 31 budget deadline. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz struck a similar tone last week when he was asked about the stadium a day before he was scheduled to meet with Hochul on state budget matters, including the negotiations.
“We keep on negotiating, and progress is being made,” said Poloncarz, who also noted, “These are very complex transactions. They take time and it’s more important to get it right than to just do something quickly.”
News staff reporter Sandra Tan contributed to this story.
