Dive Brief:
- Just over three years after its ceremonial groundbreaking, Highmark Stadium is open and ready for business. A Gilbane-Turner joint venture delivered the keys to the finished $2.1 billion stadium this week, per an announcement Tuesday.
- The project’s delivery represents the conclusion of a massive public-private partnership and the completion of the largest construction project in Western New York history, according to the announcement from Turner.
- Construction of the 1.6 million square-foot Orchard Park, New York, NFL stadium was not without controversy. However, the ceremonial ribbon cutting represented a victory lap for the project, which crossed its goal line for minority- and women-owned business contracting.
Dive Insight:
Nearly 6,000 craft workers logged about 5 million labor hours to build Highmark Stadium, according to Turner.
That crew worked to construct a 60,108-seat stadium with a 360-degree canopy, designed to mitigate exterior wind factors, that covers 64% of the seating bowl. Some Bills fans may appreciate heated concourses, radiant heating above some seats and the world’s largest snow-melt system, which will abate accumulation during the infamous Buffalo-area winters, per Turner’s release.
“Delivering a stadium of this scale and significance required extraordinary collaboration, innovation, and commitment from thousands of people over several years,” Carl Stewart, Turner vice president, said in the release. “From the earliest planning stages through construction, our team worked alongside the Buffalo Bills, Gilbane, New York State, Erie County, trade partners, and the local community to create a world-class venue that reflects the passion of Bills fans and the strength of Western New York.”
In the equivalent of the project’s first quarter, the project came under fire when Erie County, New York, then-Legislature Chairperson April Baskin, who is now a state senator, called out the project team for not meeting initial minority business hiring goals.
But meeting those goals was a major highlight of Tuesday’s ceremony, and something spotlighted by the project team earlier this year.
In the end, the project paid over $490 million to MWBE participants, as well as over $250 million to regional, Western New York MWBE firms. The shares of those contract amounts reflect percentages agreed upon in the project’s Community Benefits Agreement, which used $1.5 billion as the stadium’s cost, since that was the estimated price at the time of the agreement in 2023.
With the Orchard Park stadium complete, the next major NFL stadium eyeing the end zone is Nashville, Tennessee’s $2.1 billion Nissan Stadium, the future home of the Tennessee Titans.
The construction team — which consists of Turner; AECOM Hunt; Brentwood, Tennessee-headquartered Polk & Associates Construction; and Nashville-based ICF Builders & Consultants — topped out on the stadium in November. The group is eyeing February 2027 for completion.
Highmark Stadium will host its first official event Aug. 8: a scrimmage for the Bills.
