Meh, terrible newspaper anyways. For example, here is a long report on today’s proposal of a waterfront stadium to the Buffalo city common council.
http://buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121022/CITYANDREGION/121029746/1109
What they didn’t mention is that this is nothing but a publicity stunt since they haven’t talked to the Bills, the NFL, the County, or the State. They’re presenting a “proposal” to the city without any buy in at all from any of the actual stakeholders.
Speaking of that waterfront stadium… How do you get 70000 people on and off a peninsula? It would be awesome getting home from a 1pm game at midnight.
lol i’m going to buy my boat back and start running a game day ferry at $20 bucks for a 30 second ride.
Milwaukee does it with >100000 people at their lakefront festival grounds. But then again, they built the infrastructure to do it!
^ That theater has a capacity of 23k. 70k people don’t show up at their park and all leave at once.
Doesn’t look that hard. A few bridges over the ship canal and Buffalo river so that Fuhrmann BLVD isn’t the only way off the peninsula and problem solved. Well, except for where to put 20k cars when there’s only room for 5k. Gotta rip down the skyway too.
Look up summerfest attendance rates… the 1 amphitheater holds 23k people, you forgot the other 10-12 stages full of people.
Average attendance rates are in the 80k people per day down there (800k-1m total attendance for the 11 days it runs)
It would be really cool to have it there if they could work out the logistics.
And deal with that minor fact that the team will probably be gone once Mr Burns dies.
And you can’t compare summer festivals where people are coming and going all day long to an NFL football game where everyone leaves at once. I just keep thinking about what a PITA it was leaving every Bills game I’ve ever gone to and there are multiple roads leading in every direction from the Ralph.
Mods… can we break this stadium discussion out to it’s own thread?
Water Taxi
Subway Stop
Access Bridges/Tunnels
Make the subway efficient enough to handle the bulk of the fans, and driving to the game would become obsolete especially once you factor in alcohol consumption.
Problem Solved
I took a sports management class with UB’s athletic director. His take was that we had better hope that LA has a football team before Ralph dies. Seems pretty reasonable.
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Turn Bethlehem Steel into a big ass parking lot, run trams between stadium and parking lot.
The team will not leave buffalo. We are a small market team that sells almost 80,000 tickets no matter what the team does. We have a huge pull from Ohio, PA, and WNY along with a major city only 90 miles away. The state wont let the team move without a 300 million dollar penalty as well. San Diego is a better shot at moving than we do as they don’t sell anything.
As someone who lived in Milwaukee 18 years of my life… and personally experienced >a dozen Summerfests… it is a very fair comparison between them, especially on a Friday/Sat night at the festival. I’ve been to football games at both the Ralph and Lambeau; and the “exit” is about the same # of people in the same time frame. It’s just managed 100X better at Milwaukee’s Lakefront for Summerfest (for additional reasons then just car traffic; namely $2 round trip park-and-ride buses from all over the city).
Hrm. I am all for downtown development and getting more people down there. Taking the general cynicism about transportation / parking into consideration, it could be a real boom for downtown hotels / bars/retail and a potential shuttle service.
Frys idea of leveling bethlehem steel and using it for parking might not be that crazy. or the first ward / grain elevator area.
It could bring some relevance to the subway system as well, that thing is packed for every event at HSBC…
Parking will not be an issue, by the time this little project happens we will be able to transport people like in Star Trek. Although if people could transport why would they go to a Bills game? 
Not to sound gay but more than anything, I think the symbolic impact this would have on Buffalo would net the greatest effect for us.
It would be an undeniable sign of hope for a city that hasnt been able to turn a massive, sustainable, long term project in the last umpteen years. It would mean the Bills are staying, it would mean NCAA tournament finals, it would mean massive concerts all year round, it could make us look that much closer to being a legitimate destination. We all know nobody takes Buffalo seriously but imagine the way the country could see us when they do the flyover blimp shots and you see this thing sitting on the waterfront rather than getting the typical Niagara Falls, or guy at anchor bar tossing chicken wings lol.
I 100% agree with this…
however…
there’s a pretty slim chance this would EVER happen in our lifetimes. There’s too much other stuff that needs to happen before this could happen, not to mention the red tape and politics that would be involved.
The waterfront property in and around the Bethlehem steel plant is incredibly polluted and would have to go through an abatement process after soils testing before even a parking lot could be placed there (this is why that porperty has just sat as long as it has, it costs too much to make it useable)
The skyway removal is still a subject of argument
The city would NEVER agree to fund the required infrastructure to support such a project.
As previously stated, this is a publicity stunt as none of the actual investors or affiliated parties have even discussed this.
It’s a damn shame, it really WOULD be an awesome idea to move forward with.
I think this project will be finished right after the Peace Bridge project.
I’m pretty sure the control board isn’t going to approve a new stadium.
lol we’re so fucked that we have a state control board and we’re talking about a new stadium.
I agree, however if there is any chance that this will happen (and there is, if we stay we could/will need a new stadium eventually) this could essentially be the first step in clearing that red tape so when the time comes were more prepared. Jus sayin
If you guys really think this could happen… I have 2 groups for you that will kill anything and everything in buffalo… “Historic Preservation Society” combined with the “Environmentalists”.
I’m sure one or both will have some dumb fucking thing that will prevent any sort of development on the waterfront, just like they do everywhere else in Buffalo.
We can’t build a bridge… a bird might run into it!
We can’t tear that building down… It’s historic! (Meanwhile, the “building” is 2.5 walls that remain standing after decades of no one giving a shit)
I’m sure they’ll find some animal or creature that lives in the toxic waste at Bethlehem that will prevent any cleanup; because that’s the only place in the world that it can live… in the toxic waste that’s polluting the Great Lakes slowly; but fuck us Humans, the freak of nature toxic avenger slug is more important.