Football stadiums are certainly intensive uses, but only for a few days every year. The rest of the time, they’re mostly empty. Sure, there’s also the rare monster truck rally, or high school game, but that’s about it For football, it will be active 10 to 12 times a year, including pre-season games, as opposed to the 60,000 office workers that go downtown 250 days every year.

A stadium will have minimal ibenefit on surrounding businesses. I don’t believe most fans will substitute their grills and Genny-filled coolers, or Pinto Ron and the others, with the likes of TGI Friday’s, Chef’s and the Cobblestone Grill. Chippewa Street won’t really benefit much either; ten to twelve days a year of stadium use compared to the 104 days that Chippewa currently swings hard. Also, Chippewa Street’s bars cater to a much different crowd — twentysomethings, mostly college students and educated young professionals — as opposed to the generally older, predominantly blue-collar Bills crowd. Cheektowaga Stan probably isn’t going to party at Big Shotz after the game.

There’s also parking, which in Buffalo will mean surface lots. Rapid transit isn’t an option; there’s nowhere near enough park-and-ride spaces, neighborhood parking, and train capacity to currently handle tens of thousands of Bills fans in the space of an hour.

In short, a stadium, practice facilities and parking — in Buffalo, likely to be on mostly surface, because land is so cheap — that occupies hundreds of acres near the CBD will have much less of an overall benefit compared to devoting the same amount of land for high-density residential or commercial use.

“But Cleveland has a downtown stadium”, you say. Downtown Cleveland isn’t the equivalent of two downtown Buffalos - it’s much, much larger. The stadium is adjacent to a downtown with many large underground parking ramps that are normally used by hundreds of thousands of office workers. There’s also three transit lines that serve downtown, including two lines with stations at the stadium itself. The footprint of the stadium is limited mainly to the building itself, while in Buffalo, it would require far more space.

By the way DAN. I thing 8900 of those Zubas hits are on your site.

http://www.topix.net/forum/source/wgrz/TRNRTHMV6738DULDU

I think it would be a good idea to rename the WGRZ Web site “Cheektowaga Rising”. What does Lancaster Stan think?

Just gotta’ mention some recent findings. Google search results:

Buccaneers zubaz: 208
Jaguars zubaz: 280
Seahawks zubaz: 299
49ers zubaz: 403
Ravens zubaz: 412
Texans zubaz: 419
Falcons zubaz: 422
Panthers zubaz: 446
Titans zubaz: 470
Redskins zubaz: 535
Broncos zubaz: 588
Raiders zubaz: 593
Saints zubaz: 626
Steelers zubaz: 640
Bengals zubaz: 653
Browns zubaz: 660
Vikings zubaz: 695
Rams zubaz: 708
Chargers zubaz: 721
Cardinals zubaz: 736
Packers zubaz: 815
Patriots zubaz: 831
Chiefs zubaz: 861
Bears zubaz: 871
Lions zubaz: 875
Colts zubaz: 892
Giants zubaz: 973
Cowboys zubaz: 1,150
Dolphins zubaz: 1,350
Eagles zubaz: 1,540
Jets zubaz: 1,930
Bills zubaz: 9,610

that is the NFTA site