Buffalo Bills stadium, tech hub top the year in business – Buffalo News

But it also wasn’t a great year, either.

The region’s economy kept plugging along. Unemployment remained at historically low levels, under 4%, but the region’s job growth was subdued, leaving it more than 10,000 jobs below pre-pandemic levels.

The region was tapped to be one of the finalists for a tech hub that could help jump-start the undersized technology sector here and play off the massive semiconductor facility planned in Syracuse.

But there also were scattered job losses. Republic Steel closed in Lackawanna, costing 178 jobs. Another 300 vanished when Yellow Corp. shut its nationwide trucking business.

The region lost three of its publicly traded companies when Computer Task Group was acquired by a Dutch company; Life Storage was bought by Extra Space Storage, costing more than 100 jobs; and drug development firm Athenex went bankrupt and sold off its assets.

Here’s a closer look at the region’s top business stories from the past year.

The Bills officially broke ground in June on a new $1.7 billion Highmark Stadium. With a commitment from the team to remain in Orchard Park for 30 years, any lingering doubt about the long-term future of the franchise in Western New York should become much like the soon-to-be-former stadium: a thing of the past.

Since that early June start to constructing a new stadium, work on the site across from the current stadium has been moving at a feverish pace.

The construction site now may just look like a big hole in the ground, but down below there are hundreds of workers building the foundation for the more visible and larger-scale work that lies ahead. That will multiply to thousands of workers on the site by the end of next year as officials try to reach the goal of putting 10,000 people to work on this project.

The three upstate regions collaborated with each other, instead of competing with each other, for designation as a federal “tech hub.”

The three-region bid was one of 31 to receive tech hub status in a competition run by the Economic Development Administration. But their work isn’t over yet.

Now the joint bid is trying to become one of a select number of the 31 to receive up to $75 million in federal funds to kick-start their plans. They are working on submitting proposals for consideration. The joint bid focuses on creating a semiconductor corridor, tapping into projects already in New York State as well as those on the way, such as Micron Technology’s massive chip fabrication operation planned for outside Syracuse.

At least 15 former employees filed lawsuits since 2015 that accused Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center of discrimination based on race, gender or disability, with the cancer center paying at least $4.67 million to settle six of those cases, The Buffalo News reported in April.

Further, influential developer Michael L. Joseph resigned in mid-May from his longtime post as Roswell Park board chair after his development company was hit with a racial discrimination lawsuit.

In the aftermath, board member Leecia Eve was elevated to board chair; she is the first woman and first person of color to have that role. Further, Roswell Park hired Buffalo Deputy Mayor Crystal Rodriguez-Dabney as its chief diversity officer and senior vice president, a role the cancer center had long planned. And amid public pressure, Roswell Park in August released a diversity report that it had kept secret since its 2022 completion.

The United Auto Workers union went on strike against select plants run by General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. 

Local UAW members at GM’s two plants and Ford’s stamping plant were never directed to join the walkout. But UAW members across the three automakers will reap the benefits of the new labor contracts in place at the three automakers.

And the impact goes beyond the UAW members’ paychecks. GM pledged new investment in its Town of Tonawanda engine plant, a facility whose role in an electric vehicle future had been unclear. GM also affirmed a previously announced investment in its Lockport components plant. And Ford pledged to invest in its Hamburg stamping plant, which the UAW said Ford at the outset of contract talks wanted to close.

For over a year, Medaille University and Trocaire College planned to preserve the financially ailing Medaille’s programs and jobs by having Trocaire acquire its neighboring university – staff, students, campus and all.

The deal was supposed to close last summer with Trocaire acquiring all of Medaille’s assets – and debts – in time for classes to resume last fall. Instead, Medaille announced it would close permanently on Aug. 31 after the deal abruptly fell through.

Neither school disclosed what happened, but Trocaire indicated that taking over Medaille would be a bigger liability than expected. The closure affected 420 employees and about 1,600 students, but schools in Western New York and beyond responded with “teach-out” offers to take Medaille students, and several snagged former staff as well.

Watching New York roll out its retail cannabis program has been kind of like a car crash – hard to watch, but impossible to look away.

When the state legalized recreational pot sales in 2021, officials predicted it would have at least 120 adult-use recreational dispensaries open by now. Instead, there are 32 – three of them in Western New York. Together, the 32 stores have sold a total of $132 million in cannabis product, according to the Office of Cannabis Management.

The rollout has been slow and fitful, halted twice by lawsuits. Now, general licensing is in effect, potentially squashing any more legal action against the Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program that prioritizes applicants with cannabis-related convictions who are also business people in New York. But there are fears that more lawsuits could be coming, and dispensary licensees are rushing to get their stores open before another legal injunction can stop their progress.

Those “help wanted” signs aren’t going away. With an unemployment rate below 4% and the number of jobless workers near historic lows, local businesses continue to scramble to fill open positions.

The worker shortage is driving up wages and also forcing many companies to change how they do things to get by with fewer employees. The shortage also is one reason why the region’s recovery from the Covid-19 recession has been sluggish, leaving Buffalo Niagara with more than 13,000 fewer jobs than before the pandemic.

After national searches that took most of 2023, SUNY Erie Community College and Buffalo State University announced their next presidents on the same day, Dec. 6.

ECC chose a familiar face, Adiam Tsegai, its former provost who had been leading the college since its last president, David Balkin, stepped down a year ago after only 11 months in office. Buffalo State named Chance Glenn, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Houston-Victoria. Tsegai’s appointment was effectively immediately, while Glenn starts his new job on July 1.

Both searches held some drama, with ECC’s board seeking to replace a president whose cuts to programs and staff reversed a $9 million deficit but made him an enemy of ECC’s faculty union, while Buffalo State’s held rumors that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins were pursuing the job. In the end, an academic won out, while Higgins is resigning his seat to lead Shea’s Performing Arts Center and Brown is considering running for his seat.

The Buffalo Bills business department was in a bit of disarray.

John Roth, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Bills who was also running the business operations of the Buffalo Sabres, was let go in October – along with Bills general counsel Kathryn D’Angelo – after sources confirmed to The Buffalo News they were having a romantic relationship that was deemed inappropriate because Roth was her superior.

Terry Pegula, team owner and president, led the front-office shakeup, less than three months after he bounced Bills executive vice president/COO Ron Raccuia, who led the negotiations for a new stadium with Kim Pegula suffering cardiac arrest in June 2022.

Josh Dziurlikowski is serving in the role on an interim basis. He is the only Bills executive left from the leadership team named to run the team’s business department after Roth’s hire.

In August, Pegula dissolved Pegula Sports & Entertainment, the company that oversaw the family’s sports and entertainment holdings, while naming himself president of the hockey team.

The change separated the Sabres and Bills for the first time since the Pegula family purchased the latter in 2014.

Rising mortgage rates and a shortage of homes for sale put a damper on the Buffalo Niagara housing market, but prices still kept rising.

Median sale prices locally are up 5.2% over the past 12 months, but that’s the first time in four years that the region hasn’t had double-digit price increases. Pending sales this year – where a contract is signed, but the deal hasn’t closed yet – are down about 8% compared with last year, falling to the lowest level since 2012.