The Bills and taxpayers - view from an English newspaper

[MidnightVoice]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/05/buffalo-bills-new-stadium

The Bills are becoming a case study in how property deals get struck between power brokers and politicians, laying bare the question of what, if anything, a team owes its community ......

The Bills relocated to what is today called Highmark Stadium in 1973, moving to Orchard Park, a green, quiet and sparsely populated place an 11-mile drive south of downtown Buffalo. Now they are finalizing a deal to replace dated Highmark with a new stadium proposed to open in 2026.

But the team will not return to the city center. Plans call for the venue to be built in a parking lot adjacent to Highmark – with local and state taxpayers footing $850m of the $1.4bn cost. That would be the largest ever public subsidy for a new NFL stadium – much of it covered by a county with many low-income residents for the benefit of a franchise owned by a multi-billionaire.

Known for the agony of losing four successive Super Bowls in the 1990s, the Bills are becoming a case study in how property deals get struck between power brokers and politicians, and a touchstone for the question of what, if anything, a team owes its community – and vice versa.

[Night Train]

:deadhorse

[notacon]

The premise that “Bills are becoming a case study in how property deals get struck between power brokers and politicians” is belied by what happened in 1973 to build a crappy stadium in the middle of nowhere (quaintly described as “Orchard Park, a green, quiet and sparsely populated place an 11-mile drive south of downtown Buffalo”)


The deal to build a much better domed stadium in a much more desirable location (after a contract was signed) was an exponentially BAD **** up of the Erie Country legislature that went cheapskate and decided to spend $20 million (instead of the reasonable $55 million....with the very real promise of much more development near the Lancaster location that would have produced many, many more jobs than the total lack of ANY development in the “green, quiet and sparsely populated” middle of nowhere.


In 1973, if there WAS a “property deal stuck between power brokers and politicians” WNY would have had a MUCH better stadium with MUCH more development and JOBS.


Sometimes those “deals” work extremely well for the greater good of a community. What the WNY community got in 1973 was a big fat pile of smelly ****.

[Mace]

It keeps getting ignored that the state gets back the full amount over the term of the lease.

If you have a mortgage, you know you didn't get free money from the bank at the expense of other people who use the bank.