The lead construction firms building the new Buffalo Bills stadium have not done nearly enough to recruit minority contractors to work on the project, Erie County Legislature Chairwoman April Baskin says.
“I am, absolutely, just disgusted at their lack of transparency, at their ability to ignore the language in the legal document that the Buffalo Bills signed that says that they are accountable to outreach in a very specific way,” she said. “If they think that I’m going to stand for them submitting a bunch of waivers and ‘good faith effort’ when I have a laundry list of people who are sitting here saying, ‘We want to work. We just don’t know how we can figure it out,’ they are sadly mistaken.”
Last month, Empire State Development concluded that the Bills hiring through early June of minority and women-owned businesses, as well as service-disabled and veteran-owned businesses, to build the new $1.54 billion stadium “is well below its expected performance” under project participation goals.
The Bills are required to make and document a “good faith effort” to achieve, at minimum, an overall participation goal of 30% for minority and women-owned businesses – 15% each. In addition, there is a 6% goal for service-disabled veteran-owned businesses.
Representatives with the Bills and with the project construction manager responded that only a small fraction of all the bid packages have been released, and even fewer have been awarded. Plans to involve minority and women-owned businesses in the construction process are still moving forward, they said.
Kathryn D’Angelo, the Bills’ general counsel and senior vice president for business administration, said only 10% of the stadium’s construction value has been awarded to contractors so far, and the chance for minority subcontractors to access information and be hired for smaller bid packages remains high.
“There’s a lot of opportunity left of the…
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