samhexum Posted September 18, 2021 Share Posted September 18, 2021 I read that they're threatening to move unless the taxpayers give them a new stadium. What a novel approach for a pro sports team! What's the feeling locally? marylander1940 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloKyle Posted September 18, 2021 Share Posted September 18, 2021 Haha, they are not really threatening at this point. They are basically just trying to figure out the amount the taxpayers will pay and how much the owners will pay. And that all goes through the capital in Albany. The new governor Kathy Hochul is from Buffalo so she knows how this needs to get done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samhexum Posted September 18, 2021 Author Share Posted September 18, 2021 8 minutes ago, BuffaloKyle said: The new governor Kathy Hochul is from Buffalo so she knows how this needs to get done. Bribes, graft and back-alley deals? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ purplekow Posted October 4, 2021 Share Posted October 4, 2021 That is how all government deals get made. A new stadium will provide construction jobs and keeping the team there will generate many ancillary jobs. Professional sports teams have leverage in that way and they use it. And should the government elect not to kick in the team is gone. Witness the Oakland now Vegas Raiders and the San Diego now Los Angeles Chargers and the St Louis now Los Angeles Rams. The St Louis now Arizona Cardinals are another recent example. I do not know if the stadium plan in Buffalo is for a solo use football stadium or if it is planned to be a multi sport stadium for Football and baseball or two connected stadium with two separate playing areas. In any case, Buffalo in the winter has wind, snow and the Bills and only one of them are not making people miserable these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samhexum Posted October 4, 2021 Author Share Posted October 4, 2021 (edited) On 10/4/2021 at 3:17 AM, purplekow said: Buffalo in the winter has wind, snow and the Bills and only one of them are not making people miserable these days. You think that many people like snow? 😱😁😎🤣😇 Edited March 12, 2022 by samhexum just for the hell of it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSR Posted October 4, 2021 Share Posted October 4, 2021 1 hour ago, purplekow said: That is how all government deals get made. A new stadium will provide construction jobs and keeping the team there will generate many ancillary jobs. Professional sports teams have leverage in that way and they use it. And should the government elect not to kick in the team is gone. Witness the Oakland now Vegas Raiders and the San Diego now Los Angeles Chargers and the St Louis now Los Angeles Rams. The St Louis now Arizona Cardinals are another recent example. I do not know if the stadium plan in Buffalo is for a solo use football stadium or if it is planned to be a multi sport stadium for Football and baseball or two connected stadium with two separate playing areas. In any case, Buffalo in the winter has wind, snow and the Bills and only one of them are not making people miserable these days. Those who favor taxpayer funding for stadiums use some very shady accounting to exaggerate future tax revenue from jobs created and new business generated. Unfortunately, reality always falls well short of the projections' starry-eyed optimism. In the end, the taxpayers end up forking over a lot of money to the team owners to keep the team in their city. It's welfare for billionaires. HuskyC, samhexum, mike carey and 2 others 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ purplekow Posted October 4, 2021 Share Posted October 4, 2021 There is no doubt the team owners make money but the local jurisdiction also makes money. If a team leaves, the jurisdiction is left with a large stadium with very little practical use and loses the income the team generated. So with the owners having the upper hand in regard to staying or going, each jurisdiction should carefully determine if a new stadium makes sense for them. That there is corruption and bribery is an unfortunate aspect of every kind of government transaction from dog licenses to garbage collection to a new stadium. The better and more honest a local government, the more likely that the jurisdiction will do well with the deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloKyle Posted October 5, 2021 Share Posted October 5, 2021 17 hours ago, purplekow said: A new stadium will provide construction jobs and keeping the team there will generate many ancillary jobs. Our local politicians have been trying to get worked into the new stadium deal that all the jobs to build the stadium should be all local citizens who come from low income areas of the city and need the jobs the most. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ bashful Posted October 22, 2021 Share Posted October 22, 2021 (edited) Will be interesting to see how the Bears’ move to the suburbs plays out. Mayor Lightfoot wants them to stay in the city, but I don’t think that will happen. Edited October 22, 2021 by bashful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloKyle Posted October 23, 2021 Share Posted October 23, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, bashful said: Will be interesting to see how the Bears’ move to the suburbs plays out. Mayor Lightfoot wants them to stay in the city, but I don’t think that will happen. They are having the same thing play out here. The Bills play in Orchard Park which is a suburb of Buffalo. They want to build the new stadium across the street from the current one but, mainly the media it seems, wants to bring up the idea of building it in downtown Buffalo. There just is no parking and no place to put it. It's fine in Orchard Park. It's not all that far from downtown anyway really. Edited October 23, 2021 by BuffaloKyle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ bashful Posted October 24, 2021 Share Posted October 24, 2021 23 hours ago, BuffaloKyle said: They are having the same thing play out here. The Bills play in Orchard Park which is a suburb of Buffalo. They want to build the new stadium across the street from the current one but, mainly the media it seems, wants to bring up the idea of building it in downtown Buffalo. There just is no parking and no place to put it. It's fine in Orchard Park. It's not all that far from downtown anyway really. Getting to Soldier Field is not easy for suburbanites. I’ve never been there, so can’t comment on parking, but the commuter rail stations (Union and Ogilvie) are about three miles away. A bit of a hike, and only worse in Chicago weather, and under the influence of alcohol. Arlington Park is an established stop on the Metra line out of Ogilvie, right next to the place. Wouldn’t be a long ride from the city, about 40 to 60 minutes or so depending on stops. Once it stops at Arlington Park, you’re there. Get off the train, and walk a few feet onto the property. Managing the crowds will require expanding the platform a little east, and further west (plenty of land), and working with Metra on special schedules and extra cars like they do with Ravinia concerts, just on a larger scale. There is also a freeway along side Arlington Park. I hope they’ll consider creating designated ramps for entering and exiting the stadium so less traffic backs up on the surface streets around the stadium. However, I don’t think the state has any appetite to use public money for that, nor should they since since finances are in shambles due to rich pensions promised, that are under funded. Too bad states can’t declare bankruptcy, but I digress. The other drawback with Soldier is seating, or specifically not enough seats to host a super bowl. Chicago would finally get to host a Super Bowl at a new stadium. I’m very close to the new location. Just two stops away on Metra in a neighboring suburb. I’m in favor of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samhexum Posted October 24, 2021 Author Share Posted October 24, 2021 On 10/22/2021 at 10:32 PM, BuffaloKyle said: They are having the same thing play out here. The Bills play in Orchard Park which is a suburb of Buffalo. They want to build the new stadium across the street from the current one but, mainly the media it seems, wants to bring up the idea of building it in downtown Buffalo. There just is no parking and no place to put it. It's fine in Orchard Park. It's not all that far from downtown anyway really. Just clear out any 10 square block section of downtown Buffalo. Would anyone really notice? 😝😇😁🤣😎 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloKyle Posted October 24, 2021 Share Posted October 24, 2021 12 hours ago, samhexum said: Just clear out any 10 square block section of downtown Buffalo. Would anyone really notice? 😝😇😁🤣😎 That's basically what they are proposing. But then again there's no where to park. samhexum 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samhexum Posted March 12, 2022 Author Share Posted March 12, 2022 On 9/18/2021 at 2:17 AM, BuffaloKyle said: The new governor Kathy Hochul is from Buffalo so she knows how this needs to get done. On 9/18/2021 at 2:25 AM, samhexum said: Bribes, graft and back-alley deals? On 10/4/2021 at 3:17 AM, purplekow said: That is how all government deals get made. On 10/4/2021 at 5:13 AM, BSR said: Those who favor taxpayer funding for stadiums use some very shady accounting to exaggerate future tax revenue from jobs created and new business generated. Unfortunately, reality always falls well short of the projections' starry-eyed optimism. In the end, the taxpayers end up forking over a lot of money to the team owners to keep the team in their city. It's welfare for billionaires. On 10/22/2021 at 10:32 PM, BuffaloKyle said: The Bills play in Orchard Park which is a suburb of Buffalo. They want to build the new stadium across the street from the current one but, mainly the media it seems, wants to bring up the idea of building it in downtown Buffalo. There just is no parking and no place to put it. It's fine in Orchard Park. It's not all that far from downtown anyway really. On 10/23/2021 at 9:42 PM, bashful said: Getting to Soldier Field is not easy for suburbanites... The other drawback with Soldier is seating, or specifically not enough seats to host a super bowl... I’m very close to the new location. Just two stops away on Metra in a neighboring suburb. I’m in favor of it. Buffalo Bills’ billionaire owner set to get $1B in public funds for new stadium The billionaire owner of the Buffalo Bills appears poised to get a record amount of public funding for a new stadium in what critics are calling an unprecedented giveaway. Gov. Kathy Hochul — a Buffalo native — is expected to announce in the next several days a deal in which New York State and Erie County agree to pay nearly $1 billion toward a new $1.4 billion stadium that will be located next to the current one, sources close to the situation told The Post. That would be the most public money ever spent on building a US stadium, University of Michigan sports management professor Mark Rosentraub told The Post. The proposal for public funding would be part of the New York budget that needs to be submitted by April 1 to the state Legislature. If it passes, the stadium, which would be designed by an architectural firm called Populous, would be open as soon as 2026. Bills Owner Terry Pegula — a fracking mogul worth more than $7 billion — had threatened to move the team from Buffalo if he didn’t get public funding to build a new stadium. But there was debate, as The Post reported in September, about whether he was bluffing, considering how closely he’s associated with Western New York. A veteran New York government lobbyist says it appears government officials bought into the threat — even if it was a bluff. “Everyone in government folded like a cheap suit,” the lobbyist, who didn’t want to be named and isn’t involved in the negotiations, told The Post. “I am stunned.” The lobbyist said it appears negotiations have happened behind closed doors, the lobbyist said. The lobbyist slammed the idea of Pegula’s team getting a billion dollars in public funding when there are more pressing needs like universal child care. Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for Pegula Sports Entertainment, told The Post that an agreement isn’t final and that there was still work to do to seal the deal. Still, he said: “The governor has done an outstanding job in getting everyone to the table together, and we continue to make strong progress.” A spokesperson for Hochul said in response to a query from The Post: “Any reports of details are premature. As we have said repeatedly, negotiations are ongoing.” Rosentraub, the Michigan professor and expert on public financing of stadiums, said the apparent New York deal is an outlier compared to other recent stadium projects, such as the Las Vegas Raiders domed stadium that costs taxpayers $750 million. “The new stadium allows Vegas to host 13 to 15 events a year like concerts it couldn’t host before because of the summer heat,” said Rosentraub, who worked on the Vegas project. He said because of those events, there was some rationale for public investment. But he said it’s hard to see the public benefit to a new Bills stadium, which won’t be domed — and therefore won’t be a hot ticket during Buffalo’s brutal winters. “If you say the only benefit is keeping the team that’s a tough one to justify,” he said. The new stadium would be built next to the current one — which opened in 1973 — in the Buffalo suburbs. There was discussion about building a new stadium in downtown Buffalo so it could revitalize the city. That’s what happened in cities like Minneapolis and Indianapolis, though they were expensive public projects. “When making an investment in a stadium in a suburb it’s hard to find the public benefit,” Rosentraub said. “Without a realistic development strategy, I’d argue this funding is quite unusual.” He said Hochul and her team would’ve been better-served offering perhaps $1 billion toward a new stadium — but only if it were to be build in downtown Buffalo and only if Pegula would’ve at least matched the public funds. Pegula has argued that he’s already spent hundreds of millions of dollars in developments for Western New York — he also owns the Buffalo Sabres hockey team — and was reluctant to plow more than a billion dollars more of his own money into a new stadium for the Bills. He let it be known it made little financial sense to spend $1 billion himself on a stadium in Buffalo because it is just too small a market, with a metropolitan area of a little more than a million people. https://nypost.com/2022/03/11/buffalo-bills-billionaire-owner-set-to-get-1b-in-public-funds-for-new-stadium/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samhexum Posted March 31, 2022 Author Share Posted March 31, 2022 On 9/18/2021 at 2:17 AM, BuffaloKyle said: governor Kathy Hochul is from Buffalo so she knows how this needs to get done. Kathy Hochul needlessly handing $850M to Buffalo Bills, legal experts say Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $850 million handout for a new Buffalo Bills stadium has bewildered experts, who say a recent, headline-grabbing legal case involving the Los Angeles Rams sets a strong precedent that could enable New York to cut a better deal. This week, Gov. Hochul announced the eye-popping sweetener from taxpayers, which will amount to the most public money ever spent on building a US stadium. The New York State Assembly will consider in the next few weeks whether to approve the $600 million from the state as part of the 2022 budget. Erie County is providing the other $250 million. Meanwhile, insiders point out that New York is taking on the massive tab despite the fact that in November, the city of St. Louis won a $790 million settlement in a suit against the NFL and Rams owner Stan Kroenke for moving the franchise to Los Angeles without first engaging in “good-faith” negotiations to stay put. A year after the NFL granted Kroenke the right to move the Rams to Los Angeles, officials for St. Louis, St. Louis County and the government entity that owns the stadium sued the NFL and Kroenke, citing league relocation guidelines it claimed require teams “to work diligently and in good faith to obtain and maintain suitable stadium facilities in their home territories.” Cities including Oakland, Calif. in the past have sued the NFL for moving teams over antitrust issues but not the NFL’s own relocation policy. The windfall for St. Louis — which had sued for $1 billion in 2017 and whose case had been slated to go to trial in January — has sparked an intense debate on whether Kroenke should foot the entire bill himself or whether other NFL team owners should also pony up. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has created an ad-hoc committee of owners to hash it out. Whoever ends up paying, it’s clear that the NFL wouldn’t be enthusiastic about another such case, notes Mark Rosentraub, a sports management professor at the University of Michigan who has done extensive research on public funding for sports facilities. “That settlement told me the NFL didn’t want to go to court,” Rosentraub said. “That is evidence if Buffalo put forth a real proposal it would be hard for the Bills to move since we know you can challenge the NFL. It is not a hypothetical.” In particular, NFL teams — the Buffalo Bills included — face the awkward fact that they effectively are granted monopolies by local governments in their respective markets. In exchange, it can become complicated for a franchise to pick up and move to another market, Rosentraub said. “We disagree with this flawed legal analysis, and the conclusion that Buffalo should be more like St. Louis — a city with no football team,” a spokesperson for Gov. Hochul told The Post in a statement. Privately, sources close to the situation say Hochul’s team never spoke to the St. Louis legal team to inform their negotiations with the Bills’ billionaire owner Terry Pegula. Hochul’s team claimed it was aware of the Kroenke case, but felt that it was a different situation because Kroenke allegedly misrepresented his intentions to St. Louis, according to the sources. Nevertheless, Gov. Hochul’s largesse to the Bills has baffled bystanders including Michael Agguire, a California-based attorney who on Jan. 25 sued the NFL and the Los Angeles Chargers in San Diego Superior Court for moving the team in 2017 to LA from San Diego. “It is kind of surprising if Governor Hochul didn’t reach out to the St. Louis lawyers and speak about her options,” Agguire told The Post. “The St. Louis result basically means cities now have a Magna Carta that protects them from unreasonable demands from the NFL monopoly. St. Louis opened up a whole new corridor of cases.” Responding to the suggestion that the Bills would have a hard time moving, a Pegula Sports Entertainment spokesman told The Post: “Relocation could have been a very real possibility if the governor had not worked so hard to get everyone to the table.” The governor’s spokesperson added that “The Buffalo Bills franchise is a proven economic driver for the Buffalo region and the state,” noting that it generates $27 million annually in direct income, sales and use taxes for New York State, Erie County and Buffalo. The governor’s office predicts that those revenues will total $1.6 billion over a 30-year lease period and bring more than $385 million to the Buffalo area each year. https://nypost.com/2022/03/31/kathy-hochul-needlessly-handing-850m-to-buffalo-bills-legal-experts-say/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloKyle Posted October 27, 2022 Share Posted October 27, 2022 The Bills finally released the first official renderings of what the stadium will look like outside and inside: https://www.buffalobills.com/news/stadium-news Looks pretty cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bretts2002 Posted October 31, 2022 Share Posted October 31, 2022 Josh Allen is a pretty darn hot dude! BuffaloKyle and thomas 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samhexum Posted November 14, 2023 Author Share Posted November 14, 2023 NFL bettor loses $2 million in horrific Bills ‘Monday Night Football’ loss @BuffaloKyle what did you do?!?!?! Bills fan killed in hit-and-run incident during 'Monday Night Football' loss There is no suspect in custody at this time, but New York State and Buffalo Police later located a vehicle believed to have been involved. @BuffaloKyle what did you do?!?!?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuffaloKyle Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 I was at work during the game I am innocent! 😇 Oh and they do have a suspect in custody now in the hit and run. samhexum 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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