Will the Buffalo Bills Get a $1.4 Billion Stadium?

Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll look at how far New York State might go to help build a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. We’ll also look at a play that’s coming to Off Broadway and tells the story of a Dreamer.

The Buffalo Bills have passionate fans like the actress Christine Baranski and the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, who taped a segment from his “Situation Room” studio about his memories of the team, including the four Super Bowls that they played in during the 1990s — “which, unfortunately, we lost.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Bills fan, has done more than merely mention the Bills in speeches and post photos while watching Bills games. Perhaps her most consequential support of the team has unfolded in back-room talks with its owners. The subject: building a $1.4 billion stadium.

The negotiations reflect Hochul’s desire to keep the team from moving, especially during an election year. And helping with the stadium is a possibility right now because of the state’s unusually bright financial picture.

But my colleagues Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Ken Belson write that providing a substantial subsidy for a sports team is all but certain to prompt pushback from critics. And with the state budget due next week, Hochul may need to explain the taxpayer benefits, given the long history of publicly underwritten arenas that have had relatively little economic impact.

The stadium could be financed with as much as $1 billion — a combination of money from the state and Erie County, of which Buffalo is the county seat, according to two people familiar with the structure of the proposed deal, which has not been finalized. The rest of the money, they said, would come from a loan from the N.F.L. and money from the team owners.

With seats for roughly 60,000 fans, the proposed stadium would hold fewer people than Highmark, the Bills’ current home. But it would have more luxury club seating, which brings in more revenue than regular seats.

Would the Bills leave Buffalo if another city offered to spend more on a new stadium? The editorial board of Syracuse’s main news outlet recently described any threat that the team would leave as a bluff, declaring that “taxpayers should not be bullied into bailing out the team’s uber-rich owner and the uber-uber-uber-rich National Football League.” Terry Pegula, who owns the team along with his wife, Kim, made his fortune through fracking and also owns the Buffalo Sabres of the N.H.L. He has a net worth of $5.8 billion, according to Forbes.

Hochul has yet to present a potential stadium deal to state lawmakers, who must approve it. Rumors about stadium financing have been swirling in Albany, adding even more friction to already tense negotiations over other issues in the state budget, including new proposed funding for child care programs.

“If the Bills left Western New York, it would be a devastating loss to the psyche and the fabric of our community, so losing the Bills is not an option,” said State Senator Tim Kennedy, a Democrat from Buffalo. “How we get there and how we finesse this through the budget process is something that I think still has to take shape.”

Weather

It’s a breezy, mostly sunny day in the mid-30s, with wind gusts at night and during the day. In the evening, it’s partly cloudy with temps dropping to the low 20s.

alternate-side parking

In effect until April 14 (Holy Thursday).

Lt. Gov. Benjamin is focus of a fraud investigation

Prosecutors are looking into whether Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin participated in an effort to channel fraudulent donations to his campaign fund when he ran for New York City comptroller last year.

The prosecutors have issued several grand jury subpoenas seeking records from his campaign advisers and the State Senate, where he represented Harlem from 2017 until last summer, when Gov. Kathy Hochul chose him for New York’s second-highest state post, a job she had held until former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned and she succeeded him.

Benjamin has not been accused of wrongdoing. The inquiry stems from a federal indictment filed last year charging the real estate investor Gerald Migdol, a longtime supporter of Benjamin, with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, among other crimes. Migdol was accused of orchestrating a plan to misrepresent or conceal dozens of illegal contributions to Benjamin’s campaign.

My colleagues Nicholas Fandos and William K. Rashbaum write that the investigation appears to be examining whether Benjamin directed state funding to benefit Migdol — in exchange for the contributions.

Benjamin was not named in the Migdol indictment. One subpoena, served on the secretary of the State Senate in recent weeks, sought information about Benjamin and discretionary state funding he helped direct to his district during his time as a senator, according to two officials briefed on the document. The existence of the Senate subpoena was first reported on Friday by The Daily News.

Even the existence of a federal investigation could be a disadvantage for Benjamin and Hochul going into competitive primaries in June.

The top Metro news

• The clock ran out for St. Peter’s, the team from Jersey City with the Cinderella season. St. Peter’s lost to North Carolina, 69-49, in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.

• The city’s new commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs has a background in the arts and a history of controversial statements.

• Since indoor vaccine mandates were lifted for the city’s bars, bar and club owners have reported long lines and a big bump in drink sales.

A Dreamer’s life, onstage

Tony Valdovinos said it wasn’t easy watching a rehearsal of the musical “¡Americano!” It was too personal.

“¡Americano!” is all about him, a Dreamer who walked into a Marine Corps recruiter’s office to enlist, only to learn that his parents hadn’t told him he was undocumented. “¡Americano!” shows what happened after that — a scene with his mother, in which she said “she hadn’t been truthful about our status” and he realized he would never be a Marine.

“I couldn’t imagine that an intimate moment that fell apart was captured in a form that had professional music, professional actors,” he said, “so watching the show has been tough. The message of hope is what has kept me going.”

“¡Americano!” — with previews beginning on Thursday at New World Stages, at 340 West 50th Street — reflects frustration over the Dreamers’ uncertain status. In his State of the Union Message on March 1, President Biden mentioned a renewed push for a “pathway to citizenship for Dreamers,” most of whom are now in their mid-20s to late 30s. They were shielded from deportation when they were younger by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, often called DACA, which President Barack Obama established in 2012 for those who were brought into the United States when they were children and did not obtain citizenship or legal residency.

Valdovinos’s parents brought him to the United States when he was 2 years old. He was in sixth grade on Sept. 11, 2001, and said that day led to a surge of passion for the only country he knew. That passion, in turn, prompted him to try to enlist in the Marines.

As for how his story ended up onstage, Valdovinos, who is credited as a consulting producer, said he was approached by theater producers in Phoenix several years ago after a public radio segment about him was broadcast. “They wanted to see if I was interested in them telling my story,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what that meant. Here we are, seven years later, Off Broadway.”

The score is by Carrie Rodriguez, whose album “Lola” was No. 16 on NPR’s list of the top 50 albums of 2016, the year it came out. The book is by Michael Barnard, the producing artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre Company; Jonathan Rosenberg; and Fernanda Santos, an author and former New York Times reporter who is a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

“What’s next for Dreamers? I’m not sure,” Valdovinos said. “Dreamers have lost hope and live with fear. Part of the message here is don’t lose the courage — continue holding on to hope. Nothing comes easy. Elections matter. Policies matter. People matter. ‘¡Americano!’ is about that.”

What we’re reading

• Curbed reported on the Hunter College campus, with rodents in the classroom and parts of ceiling tiles crumbling, and how it’s “falling down.”

• Silver Art Projects, in its third year at 4 World Trade Center, is a program that provides emerging New York artists with free studio space. Now it is adding an executive director.

METROPOLITAN diary

Wise guy

Dear Diary:

I was crossing Madison Avenue on a very hot August day. Traffic was mostly frozen as a Cadillac edged past a truck and stopped for the light.

The driver of the truck got out and started yelling at the driver of the Cadillac, whose windows were rolled up.

“What are you stupid or something?” he yelled.

The Cadillac’s window rolled down slowly.

“Stupid?” the man behind it said. “Who’s driving the truck and who’s driving the Cadillac?”

— Alan H. Zwiebel

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.

Melissa Guerrero, Jeff Boda and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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