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Buffalo’s professional baseball team is pitching Gov. Kathy Hochul for financing to refurbish its 35-year-old stadium — a year after she was roundly criticized for putting up $600 million in state funding to construct a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills football team.
The owners of the Buffalo Bisons hired a politically wired lobbying firm co-owned by former Buffalo Mayor Anthony Massielo to lobby Hochul’s office for “funding for Sahlen Field” — the ballpark for the Bisons, registration papers filed with the State Commision on Ethics and Lobbying said.
Masiello, during a Post interview, said he’s planning to have discussions with the City of Buffalo as well as the Hochul administration about overhauling the Bisons’ 16,600 seat built in 1988.
The state, under then Gov. Mario Cuomo, underwrote a $22 million loan for the Bisons’ stadium in the mid-1980s, considered a state-of-the-art ballpark at the time.
The Bisons team was once the top level affiliate of the New York Mets major league baseball team and is now the Triple A minor league affiliate for the Toronto Blue Jays. The team draws more than 1 million fans a year.
Masiello, who was a state senator representing Buffalo when the Bisons’ ballpark was first built, said the facility is in need of a face-lift after 35 years, noting Major League Baseball has rules requiring upkeep facilities for their minor league franchises.
“It’s preliminary. We don’t have a dollar figure. We’re still finalizing the plan,” Masiello said.
But government watchdog groups said subsidies to professional sports teams are a bad deal for taxpayers.
“Stadium subsidies are bad investments for taxpayers. They’re a business getting treated like a charity by taxpayers. It’s socialism with the social,” said John Kaehny, director of Reinvent Albany.
He noted that Hochul’s budget director just imposed a freeze on state government agencies’ spending to close a projected deficit.
“But we have enough money to plow into another stadium deal? It’s a little hard to figure,” added Kaehny.
Last year, critics panned the $1.54 billion construction of a new Buffalo Bills’ stadium as built on corporate welfare.
The construction project includes $850 million in public money – $600 million from the state and $250 million from Erie county. At the time, Hochul’s husband, Bill Hochul, was a top official at Delaware North, the stadium vendor for the Buffalo Bills, raising eyebrows. He has since stepped down.
Hochul, a Buffalonian and big Bills’ fan, defended the Bills stadium subsidy.
A spokesperson for Hochul said of the pitch of financing a new or improved Buffalo Bisons’ stadium, “Governor Hochul is committed to creating jobs and economic opportunity across every region of New York, and we carefully review all proposals to ensure they are a good deal for New Yorkers.”
The Bisons are owned by frozen food billionaire mogul Bob Rich Jr., the chairman of the board and majority owner of the Buffalo-based Rich Products Corp.
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