2025 New Highmark Stadium Progress REVEALED: Exclusive Inside Access | Built for Buffalo Episode 4

2025 New Highmark Stadium Progress REVEALED: Exclusive Inside Access | Built for Buffalo Episode 4

Hello everyone and welcome to the highly anticipated topping out ceremony. Wow, that’s it’s been a whirlwind. This is an extraordinary community. Well, backing up even to 2023. A lot of effort to get started. Big excavation and foundation job. They deserve an extraordinary stadium. 2024 was really about having a building come up out of the ground. This is going to secure this franchise here for decades. 25 feels like we’ve started to take that big impressive structure and turn it into the future home of the Buffalo Bills. As it’s really coming to life, I think it’s exceeding expectations. Every day is something new and unique and exciting. We’re trying to tell stories everywhere. From the very beginning, we look at this as this combination of science and art. It’s that balance. We can break it up into almost every part of the building. All the things that we’ve been talking about for so long have been integral to the design and what’s going to really make the place unique. Now you walk through it, you get a sense of what game day may feel like. People start to see it looking like a football stadium. You realize not only how big the stadium is, but the impact this stadium has had in this community. And you’ve got the monster over here ready for Bill’s mafia. There’s a dramatic difference between the existing High Mark and the new High Mark. You start to see it go up and up and up until the facade started going up. You didn’t really appreciate the mass of the building. Top tier, man. I underestimated the hell out of this. Everybody sees it when they drive down Abbott Road or they come down southwestern. Come down this little dip and then you come up and it’s like there it is. On a clear day when it’s sunny. I can actually see the glistening off the top of that canopy. It’s so modern. It’s so beautiful. But to see it like this is insane. the drama, the majesty of it, and just knowing like this is what’s coming in 26. It’s given Orchard Park a new skyline that has all the history, but now you’re going to create some more history over here. So, what would new High Mark say to the fans? Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be better than anyone can expect. Today is about you hard workers, men and women. You know, the topping out was a a moment that we knew that the big cranes were gone. It was great to have a day where everybody took a step back to appreciate really what we’re accomplishing out here together. We’re calling it the topping out ceremony. I call it the first piece of building the rest of the stadium. I know you guys know how to hook up to it, bolt it in, and get it done. And I want to thank you all for that. God bless you. Just seeing the looks on everybody’s faces, it was a look of progress knowing that the job wasn’t done yet, but just that sense of like we’re almost there. From the very beginning, one of the goals of the stadium was an open air. And so, we knew we were going to be open air, but that didn’t mean that we didn’t want to protect the fans from the elements. How do we keep people drier and warmer than they’ve been in the existing building, but how do we also try and minimize the effects of really harsh wind on the playing field surface? And there’s been some games in here when you couldn’t kick or punt or throw into certain end zones. And we started to run some of that initial testing. We found that solid facade would create a little bit of a negative pressure so that as air would move around the building or over the building, it would get sucked back down into the seating bowl and into the field. Today, we’re bringing up the first perforated metal panel on the building. The engineers suggested that if you were to perforate that and allow a little bit of that wind pressure to come through the facade, then it actually eliminates the negative pressure essentially like a wind screen. So this will really try to shield the wind from the fans in the stadium, give them a better experience. The prevailing winds come like west, southwest, you know, how much perforation, how much paracity did we want in order to reduce any like harmonic interference so that the wind doesn’t make a sound when it blows through. It lets about 10% through the panel. Subsequent panel that sits on top of it is going to slide right over the top. So they’ll start to lock each other in as you go up the building. So we have to start at the bottom in each bay and work it all the way to the top. You can’t do it in reverse. So there’s going to be thousands of them that go up all the way around the building. We needed the science and the engineering to keep the wind out of the building, but we also wanted the building to look great. People finally got to see that all the perforations within the facade are actually like the Bills charge and it’s just different sizes all over. Having the part of the actual Buffalo Bills logo built into it is pretty awesome. But as you can see here, the building is translucent. It’s not a hardened wall. The building will glow from within and all the translucency in all of these panels will have a subtle effect. We’re almost completely done with the facade of the building. We talked about, you know, the science versus the art. This is one where it actually blended perfectly together. So, I’m going to show you the technology building. The technology building is an 18,000 ft² building that’s outside of our actual stadium. Yeah. So, last time we were out there, it was a shell of a building. Building’s been completed. It’s gone through certificate of occupancy which means that we’ve allowed our vendors now Verizon Cisco to enter and start getting the head-end equipment of the network set up. This is the core basically the beating heart of the stadium. We’ve taken our whole network infrastructure and put it inside this building. 9,000 ft is for the DAZ. DAZ stands for distributed antenna system, a cellular system that’s built on the stadium. When you have a significant amount of fans, in our case 60,000 fans on the stadium, they need to connect to a cellular antenna in order to get service. There wasn’t a DAZ system here. They would be connecting to any surrounding cellular antennas in order to get service. Obviously, those antennas would not be able to handle those fans. So, what we do is we create a DAZ system which puts a series of antennas and access points around the whole entire stadium. Small cell technology allows us to put antennas inside these poles, which is faster, more compact, there’s less noise, and it just provides better 5G coverage all around. We still have fans that don’t have tickets, but they tailgate outside. Initial talks, I said, look at we got to build this Daz bigger than what the stadium’s capacity is. We’re having 21 of these poles spread out throughout the whole entire infrastructure and that’s what’s driving connectivity to all of our fans. We designed that for 80,000 people. We’ve overd designed it. The first advantage, it doesn’t take up significant amount of real estate in the current stadium. The second advantage, expansion. As technology evolves, we’re able to expand off of this building if we ever need to. Probably one of the most important and awesome advantages behind this is we’re able to stand up our network 8 months ahead of schedule. And our partners at Verizon have designed this to ensure that all of our fans are hitting maximum speeds, maximum capacity, and no latency at all. Sound was a priority in this new building and through the project that always remained a goal. So what we’re doing right now is we’re picking up the first of our 6,000 lb speaker arrays. We’ve got two separate hoists that are going to pick it up and fly it up to where there’ll be the rope access riggers up there that’ll catch the array and make the final connections to the stadium. So, we were able to design a digital sound system that is going to perform better than any other NFL building in this country. This is our off-site building warehouse where we’re putting together all the speaker arrays. We’re building offsite because it maximizes our productivity on site. It also gives us the opportunity to test everything here. How the process starts is they’ll hook up a speaker to an amp and they’ll do a impedance curve. We’ll run pink noise through it and try to get that exact same curve. As long as they match that default curve that we have, they’ll pass. If there’s any crazy anomalies outside of that curve, they’ll reject the speaker. And we do design full. Well, first walking up to that speaker array, like the magnitude of it, like just looking at that and seeing how large it was, it was like, wow. And then when they first turned it on, I mean, they turned it on obviously at a lower capacity so our ears didn’t blow out, right? But just listening to it and just hearing that clarity was just incredible. In the current stadium, there’s four speaker arrays and the way that they’re placed is almost retrofit after the fact. You know, audio was not something that a stadium in the 70s was really designed for. Existing stadium 50 years old, like rough acoustics, it’s tough, right? The sound gets thrown. It’s bouncing off a bunch of things. music comes back to you. That’s a challenge when you’re on the field trying to speak into a microphone. That’s a challenge if you’re trying to sing the national anthem. It’s a challenge just for the fans to be able to have audible sound. So, we wanted to correct all of those problems first and foremost. So, clarity was a huge focus. The canopy allowed us to place the audio sources in a position that benefits the fan acoustically. 32 speaker arrays. The majority of those speaker arrays have 14 speakers, five of those which are subwoofers. It’s really going to blow everybody away. But the way they thought about how we could use audio as a part of the immersive experience. If we want to have a herd or stampede of buffalo chasing around the building, we can do that. Somebody sitting in the front row of the 50 yard line has the same audible experience as somebody who’s in the back row of the end zone. I mean, this is going to be digitally perfect sound. It’s going to make us one of the loudest stadiums in the NFL. So, in terms of the video boards, the video boards were not part of a forgotten element of the building. So, we’re here for the first installation of the scoreboard. From the beginning of the project, the team felt that they wanted video to support the action, but they weren’t going to get caught up in how much video board square footage do we have. We weren’t going to get into the LED arms race as far as trying to beat out SoFi or Alleion type situation. With anything else, just the clarity and the precision in those screens are state-of-the-art. We’re really excited about this. We’re going from a 16 mm pixel pitch down to an 8 mm pixel pitch. It actually makes the pixels tighter which gives us better sharpness, contrast, and clarity. You know, the board in the north found its placement at the top of the stadium. In the current high mark, the main board is in like the open end zone to the west. The team runs out of the tunnel in the east. And so there’s always this pregame kind of confusion of do I stare at the tunnel? Do I look at the board? Do I stare at the tunnel? Do I look at the board? Cuz I couldn’t do both. So when we heard about that, why don’t we take that board in the south and drop it lower than the board in the north. So now when people kind of focus on that pregame entry sequence and pageantry, they got the video board right next to the tunnel supporting that action. It’s a subtle move, right? That means a lot to us as designers and I think it’ll mean a lot to the fans the more and more they come to games in the stadium. So we’re down from last time we were down here. We had we were down at gravel last time we were here. Things have now happened. We’ve got drainage in. We’ve got irrigation lines in. We’re in the last quadrant of field area to get prepped. The big pile of material you see back there is called root zone. So it’s a combination of sand and pete moss. That’s the final layer that goes down before we’re ready for sod to be rolled out here. So, one of the earliest questions that we ask a client is, “Do you want to play on natural grass or do you want to play on artificial grass?” Cuz then that drives a lot of decisions in the building. From the beginning, Kim and Terry said, “We’re going to play on grass.” We’re like, “Okay.” So, then we’re going to have to grow grass. We’re roughly about 62,000 ft of sod. It is custom grown in Hamilton, New Jersey at Tucko Turf Farms. We’re familiar with them. We’re very comfortable with them. They work hand in hand with the NFL. So, a little over a year that it was grown, maintained prior to being harvested in October, harvested, shipped up to Western New York, and put in place, green side up. We spent a lot of time working through the details on this field. Everything from where the natural grass and the artificial meat and obviously all the technology that’s below the surface. We have ground drainage, which is hooked up to a subair system. We can push and pull air through the vents, which you know, help water movement, you know, throughout the soil profile. And then above that we have some more stone. And then above that stone layer is irrigation and infield glycol system heating system. It’s a glycol heat system where we can manipulate the soil temperatures. All of that had to be coordinated and installed prior to the sod going down. And this is the transition here to the artificial. So this will be natural grass on the playing field all the way up. And you’ll see there’s tubing on the other side. That’s because we have field heat where the natural grass is. We also have snow melt where the artificial is as well as where the track is. So everything in between the ring walls is heated. Some of the trucks rolled in probably around 5:00 this morning. Some of the other installers were here around 6:00. We got here around 7. Had a lot of trouble with the rain this morning. So it is now 6:30, 7:00 at night. It’s been an all day process, but uh we’re ready to go to see all this coming together. The saw going down is really the icing on the cake, if you will. It’s organized chaos. What they’ll do is they’ll roll the saw out and then they have this machine called the sidekick and it’ll push it into place to firm and they step it and they stagger the seams. They’re so good and they’re so organized of what they’re doing. You know, they can lay a field in 2 days. When they say it’s instant lawn, it’s legitimate instant lawn. About the players and their excitement to know that this is going to be natural grass. Now I’m excited to bring them down here and actually show them the playing field that we’ve been talking about for so long. I think the players, they feel that it’s easier on their bodies in the long run. The grass is a little easier. It’s a little more forgiving. They feel more comfortable on the field and they feel like they’re able to go harder and faster. So excited, not only see it, but realize all that complexity and all the hours that went into the design are coming to fruition here. I think the whole profession of architecture is this science and art. Clearly, I’m on the art side. In this pile here is every meaningful list andor sketch from the last four years. And then what I’m doing too is was I’m digitizing all of that. Like any creative process, sometimes it comes really quickly. Other times you struggle through it. You know, with this one, it just seemed to click. When it comes to design and functionality, and it gets into the overall feel of this locker room and how this thing is designed and and why, it all really came down to this picture for me of hands together. You know, I saw that image and I was able to express my thoughts to populace to the architecture team and fine-tune that. So, I saw some really interesting ceiling treatments. And so I tried to create a structure that could link every locker stall together in the ceiling of the locker room. And if you go out there now, lockers are here. This will start to come together in the next, you know, few months. All of the work to just to get to this point is really incredible. So today we’re installing the brand new lockers. Some of the key components of the benches is you have a charging port station here. This will actually energize and charge the players devices. The uh back of the cabinet actually opens up, provides storage. There’s some ventilation down below. That’ll be tied into the duck work that supplies air into the casework. The jersey rack is right here, like a mesh panel system over a solid surface veneer. It gives it a little bit of a textured look to the back of the panel. Then we’ll install the canopy system. So this is a jig. It’s custom made that the ceiling panels attach to. All of the work to keep this level and keep it in the right spot. This jig does for them. So they just come in, lift it up, connect it. This comes away and it leaves in the ceiling. Each subsequent locker behind me, this wing gets higher and higher. So that basically what happens is when it’s done, the whole locker room feels like it’s coming down almost like the shape of the top of a football. And then when he gets to that midpoint, it’s open. And then the midpoint is where the jewel is. And that’s the the Bill’s logo hanging from the ceiling. I think the openness of it, the idea that it’s this long stretch, the coach can stand in the middle of the locker room and every player in the locker room can see him. Being able to craft a locker room that lays out so that in all those situations, the head coach has what they need, the equipment people have what they have, the trainers, and the medical staff have what they have. they can all communicate and doing that really efficiently. Really unique design and I think the players are going to love it. What’s happening now is you’re starting to see the facade of the building come to life. Those metal panels that are going up looks like it does for a very specific reason. And what that is is that what we saw early on was that a lot of iconic structure in Buffalo had these vertical windows, right? We called them windows, openings. We wanted to have a very subtle nod to that past. What we came to were these indentations in the in the facade. And when you see that, it’s there for a reason. It’s there to to talk about the past and the future. Terry made it pretty clear early on that if you plop me down in any part of this facility and I open my eyes, I better know I’m in Buffalo. This is a culmination of about 2 years of work. We’ve chosen furniture for seven different areas kind of broken out here from the most exclusive behind you to the back of house. Some areas are more subdued. If you go to the sweet lounge, that’s kind of a more of a high-end feel. You know, it’s very Nordic and light woods and things like that. So, the branding will be subtle. If you go down to the field club, that’s a whole different feel, right? That is brand forward. A lot of team colors, a lot of direct connection to the brand and to the color scheme. is we have these challenges within our concourses that we have some steel basically coming right up through the middle of the concourse and so we saw that as an opportunity to tell some really fun unique stories. Terry did want it to be generic, right? So we’re doing that in every and any space that we can in a way that we think will affect the fans the most. Again, here’s the challenge. You have steel. What are we going to do with it? We’re going to build the peace bridge around it. We’re building a full-size camper van. We’re building the world’s largest folding table. And there’s dozens of these. How do we integrate our sponsors into some of these as well? I think we’re taking great pride in opening an incredible facility, but a facility that as you walk around it, there’s just these moments where you say, “Wow, this is incredible.” Like they really went to the next level of thoughtfulness and design. And then we’re having a lot of fun. Yeah. Exactly. All of these different elements make up the whole and the hole is why we’re all here. You know, it’s the Bill story. Check one, two. All right. So, you’re on your way to the Stadium Experience Center. What are your thoughts? Uh, I can’t wait to see everything and can’t wait to figure out where I’ll be sitting for the new stadium. Hello. Finally got the call. finally got the call. Man, they’re waiting a long time. Look at that. We got us up there. Oh, man. Look at that. My beard ain’t even gray yet. We have a great football team. We have great fans. We have a great city and culture who loves football. Have all of those things come together, I think has made it a successful process. We’re Buffalo. I want the elements. I love to see Miami come up here in the winter time shivering. And we’re Western New Yorkers, you know. That’s one thing I love about the design of the new stadium. Wow, look at this. Best stadium ever. I think that that passion has kind of manifested itself in the way that the seats have sold so quickly. Gentlemen, I think we’re all ready to start the installation if you wouldn’t mind. Yeah, we wanted to do something unique with the seating pattern. What we didn’t want to do is try to put anything legible. you know, you don’t want to put the logo in or the word Bills or Buffalo. It’s just really hard to pull that off. But I could not be happier with the way it turned out. So, we worked a long time with populace. We had so many different ways of how do we bring the brand colors into the bowl. We really weren’t liking like blocks of color or sections in color. What you’ll see is around the lower bowl and then when you get to the concourse is that these areas start in red and then dissipate to blue. So, it’s a gradient pattern from red to blue in different areas. Believe it or not, they have a guide that will go around as a seat goes and they know what color each and every seat needs to be. So, it’s it looks random, but it’s all computerenerated and they know exactly which ones are red and blue. Five and six, we write basically where we at now. Exciting, right? Oh, man. I’m ready to go, man. The chefs is going to be in the building. As designers, that experience is paramount to everything that we do. from the beginning from tailgating I I think this is going to be a complete unique seamless experience and I think it starts with the Daz. So from an innovation perspective what Verizon is primarily doing is bringing in the network the technology and the partner ecosystem to deliver a seamless experience both on the field for the players and staff and off the field for the fans in the stands and in the parking lot. You start outside with the the parking spaces that are expanded for tailgating. come in through family circle and you’ve got the giant bison sculptures. Then when you get into the building for the first time, walking in, you’re going to be immersed with all kinds of different sounds. We have our frictionless markets. Fans will be able to go up, tap a card, tap their phone, enter the area, grab something to drink, walk out with it, and your card will be charged. Come in to the main concourse, and you have an immediate view of the field and the seating in, and you’ve got the canopy overhead. All of these elements combined work together to create this game day environment. new traditions will come out of moving to a new spot. The Bills fans are so unique and creative that I think the experience is going to come a lot from what they make the stadium into. I think the kind of edict for this to be a great fan experience venue started with Terry and Kim. Right from the very beginning, Kim had a lot of input into how fans would circulate through the building, how Sweet Holders able to interact with one another. But it’s all grounded in this Western New York values, and I think they’re going to really like it. The button. What is the button? The button. Let me grab my guitar. Okay. Push the button. Together. Ready? Come on, dog. You want to shout? Let’s go, Buffalo. Let’s go, baby. Wow. It’s Dion Dawkins here. We’re sneaking into the stadium today and I hope I don’t get caught. Got Mike. I’m going. I’m going. I’m going. Hey, get back here. So excited to have you guys. Welcome to Buffalo. Welcome to the organization. Yeah. John and I have had a couple players through. What’s up, gang? How you doing? I’m good. I’m Dion, bro. I think the height of the building is something everyone responds to. In this area right here is where introductions will happen in 2026. So, I’m actually going to let you guys go ahead walk through this area. We’ve had some progress since it was here last time. I don’t think anybody ever really expected the building to be so dominant and intimidating to them. Golly, bro, this is crazy. It’s the same reaction that I always see with everybody. It’s like the wow moment. It’s that I feel like I’m in a coliseum. We in like a freaking FIFA freaking soccer field. This is insane. I don’t think y’all understand cuz I underestimated it. Instead of the seats flaring out as much as they normally do, the seats are tipped up a little bit. And then the first question is, well, that seating bowl looks too steep. Is it allowed to be that steep? It’s like, yeah, everything’s fine. What’s like the maximum amount of wind you’ll feel in here? Very little. Okay. We’ve been here where the wind is howling outside and then you come stand down here and it feels like this. To somehow manifest that intimacy and that intimidation factor in the same thing and then have people walk in and look around and they can feel it and it’s not done yet. Yeah. I just like how how open everything is. All right guys, you are standing in the future locker room of the Buffalo Bills. I think that this is going to be offense. That’s my prediction. I can see I can see them doing that. They all want to go to the bathrooms. Ask John. He’ll say the same thing. I need to know where the showers are. You know, the locker room’s great, but they’re like, “Where? Show me the showers. I want to see the showers.” Okay, that looks big enough. Sauna steam there. Yep. People look up at the canal levered roof. That seems to get a lot of attention. Then the other thing that I can’t wait is the noise. And then when we point out all the speakers and the speaker arrays and they could start thinking about what’s going to sound like and how much louder it’s going to be. This place about to be rocking. Understanding what the volume of that stadium is going to be when you’ve got 60,000 fans in there cheering the team on. First game of the season. Snowman pass coming up. Thumb. I’m open. Their first reaction was, “This is a place that I’m excited to play as a home player and a place that I absolutely do not want to play as a visiting player.” What I hope for when they walk into this building, that investment was worth it and that the amount of work that we’ve done exceeds all expectations of, you know, what they thought they were getting themselves into that is going to be better. I feel an overwhelming sense of pride for what this building is going to represent. This This is what you call greatness, man. I’m excited to start playing in here. I’m glad I get a chance though to experience that and then feel the real upgrade. Hey, what’s up fellas? You know it’s the Bills up here. It’s a couple of players trying to get back down. So, come and get us from the press box. We’ll be out of here in a second. Over. Copy. All right. Over and out. 104. The design and construction of a brand new NFL stadium is a long complicated thing. It takes lots and lots of people. I’m just amazed by it. Like I think we all are amazed by it. I mean I have a role and it’s a lot of fun. But from where things start in my head to seeing them come to reality and all of the work and coordination between the deliveries, the installation, the coordination, you could go on and on. It’s mindboggling. I think the new High Mark Stadium wants to tell the old High Mark Stadium, thank you. Thanks for what you did for 50ome years. The stadium’s delivered so many great memories for everybody over the years. These moments where the game transcends sport when you see the spectacle of something that you’ll talk about forever. We aren’t going to try and beat you. We can’t beat you. But we’ve taken notes. Now it’s time to make some new memories. This building was built in 1973. And when you go from there to the most current up-to-date facility in the league, that equates to a ton of excitement. The atmosphere of a game was always one of high excitement. There was always a lot of energy in the crowd as well as, you know, whatever was happening on the field. our fans deserve what they’re getting in this new facility and that we’re not too far off now. It’s getting close to the end games. As we head into 26, it’s really starting to put, I say, the finishing touches over the next year. What you’re going to see is all these spaces come to life. What am I most excited for? That opening day. That one’s going to get me for sure. series of first. First time the team walks in, the first time Shawn speaks to the team from the locker room, the first hot dog cooked, first beer that’s poured, the first time the lights go on, inside and outside. You can go on and on. How do you miss what’s going to happen in there? It’s going to be amazing. Tradition, the memories, everything that’s here. But what is Buffalo without the Bills? This is all-encompassing, larger than anything that any of us have tried to do. It is going to be the most amazing environment to watch a football game. The end of the story isn’t written down. Eat well, sleep well, hunker down. We’re at crunch time.

This episode provides exclusive access to key milestones across the project, including a first look inside the Bills’ new locker room, the installation of the field and playing surface, progress on the scoreboard and videoboard systems, the implementation of state-of-the-art network infrastructure, and the integration of the new stadium-wide speaker and sound system. Viewers will also see the finishing touches being applied to architectural and design details that elevate the overall fan experience.

The episode also features Josh Allen’s reaction to the latest developments within the stadium, offering a unique perspective from the field’s most familiar face.

From engineering and technology to craftsmanship and design, Episode 4 documents how every element is coming together to shape the next generation of Buffalo Bills football.

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