The New Stadium

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I dreaded the site visit to the Bills Stadium job.

It’s just a massive endeavor and the politics and oversight is mind-numbing.

I realize that it has to be because an incident on a job of that size would be a huge story.

There are a whole lot of safeguards in place, and they need to have a meeting to figure out why they are having so many meetings.

I was invited to a meeting. 

It should’ve lasted about 3 minutes, but I was still sitting there about 35 minutes in as we read a form, line-by-line.

Then I went down into the ‘hole’, as they call it.

You can clearly see the outline of the place. I considered the people who might be excited by the prospect of looking around the joint, but I could only see guys I know…

…working really hard every day.

It always is stunning to me that the same guys I chat with, make fun of, and trade barbs with, are the people who can put together such a place.

Years ago I was at the Salamanca Casino looking up at the hotel from the outdoor hot tub.

“What’re you looking at?” Kathy asked.

“That window,” I said. “I was here when Scott and Joe set it. I set up the fall protection for them.”

And that’s the way it is with construction - when you work on a project it is always the building you point to and say:

“I built that.”

Of course, I can’t build one of those cardboard boxes but I’ve been a part - sometimes a huge part - of a whole bunch of the raised buildings here in Buffalo.

I rode around the stadium with Bruce - a hard-working smart guy who’ve I’ve known for a long time. 

We talked about working on the new Bills palace. Neither of us was excited about the prospect of such an endeavor.

“I guess it is cool,” Bruce said. “We are both getting up there as far as our careers go, but some day we’ll be sitting in a seat here and we’ll think about what a pain in the ass all the work was.”

I laughed, wondering if I would ever sit in a seat at a sporting event at the new place.

“It’ll be here after we’re gone,” I said.

It’s a tremendous project, and the visit went all right…

…At least this one did…

…only about 7,000 more to go.

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