When Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres co-owner Kim Pegula spoke with 7ABC Buffalo during the first week of training camp, the matter of a new stadium inevitably came up in the conversations. Pegula, speaking with 7 Eyewitness News Anchor Ashley Rowe, didn’t say there have been direct talks about a new stadium, but did insinuate there are future conversations to be had.
Pegula told 7ABC that she and husband Terry Pegula are on a “fact-finding mission” as to the future of the current Orchard Park facility, New Era Field.
“We want to get it right,” Kim Pegula said last week. Then when asked about future conversations about either relocation or upgrades with the state, she said “those meetings are going to be forthcoming.”
On Wednesday at St. John Fisher College, her husband and fellow co-owner Terry Pegula met with the reporters for the first time since the beginning of training camp. When asked about his wife’s statement, Pegula didn’t admit to any future meetings about relocation or upgrades to the stadium.
“I don’t know when she said that, but we’re just got through with a remodeling and major contribution from the state of New York in the stadium,” he said. “I feel that, in light of that, we’re not in any planning session at all right now for a new stadium. We’re still enjoying what’s been done to New Era Field.”
Pegula then pointed to not being any hurry to make a commitment that’s outside of Orchard Park.
“Well, where are we going to go,” he said when asked about the opt out of the current lease, which is scheduled for 2020. “Well we have a lease through 2023 so that’s a contractual obligation. That’s my stance on it. This is 2017. We’ve got a long ways to go before thinking about anything besides where we’re at now.”
The Bills have played at New Era Field since the 1973 season.
