Scott Radecic curls his 6-foot-3 linebacker frame into the front passenger seat of an industrial-grade golf cart with rugged wheels and protective windows. This buggy, as he calls it, is parked on a lawn just outside the fenced perimeter of the construction site for the Buffalo Bills’ future stadium.
“Is anybody afraid of heights?” he asks. Radecic is about to take us on a tour of the new Buffalo Bills stadium, and he wants to visit the roof. For him, the canopy that encircles the future Highmark Stadium is an ideal place to talk. It’s quiet (if not a little windy), it’s picturesque, and it offers a steep view into why he’s feeling more emotions over the opening of this new stadium than the closing of the old one.
Scott Radecic (copy)
Scott Radecic, founder of architectural design firm Populous and former Buffalo Bills linebacker, stands for a portrait in the new Buffalo Bills stadium on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News
Radecic has reason to care deeply about both. He’s a founder of the Kansas City-based architectural firm Populous and, with his colleague Jonathan Mallie, a co-leader on the design of the Bills’ future stadium. Radecic is also a 12-year NFL veteran and a former Buffalo Bill. He played here from 1987 to 1989, a few years after graduating from Penn State with an architectural engineering degree.
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Nowadays, as Radecic shuttles between Kansas City and Buffalo and as the Bills enter their final season at the current Highmark Stadium, people sometimes ask if he’s getting nostalgic.
“A few folks I’ve talked with have said, ‘Are you going to come back for a lot of games?’ ” Radecic says.
That’s an easy one: No.
Radecic is far more focused on 11 months from now, when the 53-year-old stadium is shuttered and the new one opens.
A view like no other
We’re driving through a maze of trailers and trucks and heading toward the new stadium. Radecic’s colleague George Fantauzza, who lives in Buffalo and co-leads Populous’ on-site team with Sam Avery, is driving us.
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There are 1,400 workers on-site, with about 61% of the Buffalo Bills new stadium project completed, and a healthy portion of them are working on an assortment of jobs that need to get done on the vast interior of the building. That includes in the concourses, suites and clubs, stairwells and escalators, market areas, bathrooms, locker rooms, field and seats.
“I love going on the roof,” Fantauzza says. “You get a view that you can’t get anywhere else.”
Radecic adds, “You can see the lake and all the wind farms and the city, and if it’s a really, really good day, you’ll see the mist from the falls.”
There’s something else you can see, too: The Bills’ current home, which opened in 1973 and was known then (and when Radecic played) as Rich Stadium. Today, the wind-whipped, open-bowl structure is deteriorating, with cracks from decades of enduring the freeze-thaw cycle, and with facilities and infrastructure far below NFL standards. Next summer, this new building across the street – which will also be known as Highmark Stadium – will open, and Radecic’s old home turf will eventually be demolished.
As Fantauzza turns the ignition and steers us toward the new stadium, Radecic starts musing about the array of construction work that happens here, often simultaneously: There’s seating, railings, elevators, escalators, concrete, steel work, and so much more. That construction, which is overseen by the general contractor Gilbane Turner, is done by a mix of national and local firms, the latter of whom might have never worked on a project of this scope. His point is that we’re about to walk into a fast-moving city of workers.
“It’s a team environment,” Radecic says. “Sean (McDermott, the Bills’ head coach) only has to worry about 53 guys, and there’s only 11 on the field at the same time. I think they might have 1,200 or 1,300 people here today.”
Fantauzza parks the buggy and we join a few of those workers on a temporary construction elevator. Moments later, we step onto the canopy roof, a steep, undulating structure that, from the road, looks like a smooth roller coaster. But when you’re standing on it, the roof is a vast, daunting landscape. Walking from the outer edge, which doubles as a water and snow gutter and drainage system, to the rim of the canopy that overlooks the stadium is like climbing a steep hill. The top gives you the wobbly sensation of overlooking a cliff – or in this case, the under-construction field about 200 feet below.
“Up here,” Radecic says. “you can see things you normally don’t see, and you can get a sense of the scale of the building.”
Even when this stadium was nothing more than sketches and renderings, Radecic has been describing it as “loud, vibrant, intimidating” and used the words “stacked” and "vertical" to convey its height and configuration, with one level layered on another. Creating a loud and intimidating building was one of the primary takeaways from a visioning session Radecic and his colleague Mallie, the co-leader of the Bills project, hosted three years ago with Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula and their top executives.
Scott Radecic (copy)
Scott Radecic inspects construction on the new Buffalo Bills stadium on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News
By contrast, the current Highmark Stadium has a more sloped and open feel.
“We’re always looking for this intimate environment,” Radecic says, standing near the edge of the canopy and motioning to the open bowl below, which is awaiting the installation of seats. “The current stadium is intimate, but it’s intimate because everybody is close.”
By “close,” Radecic means that the current stadium is packed: Seat space and legroom, and even the positioning of premium and club seating, are tighter than what fans will experience in the new stadium.
“We wanted to bring the intimacy of the old stadium here,” he says, “but we’re adding to it.”
Part of the intimacy Radecic is talking about will emanate from the sheer volume this stadium will produce. The Bills invested heavily in their audio system, with speakers affixed to the underside of the canopy and angling sound downward. Those stacked levels create an asymmetrical cantilever effect, with one layer hanging over another. “That will keep people drier,” Radecic says, “but every time you see a cantilever, it’s also an opportunity for sound to reflect off the surface …
“It’s going to make this building so much louder.”
From past to future
Radecic’s memories of the soon-to-be old stadium are good ones: Coach Marv Levy revving up the team by asking, “Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?” Fans dancing to the Bills’ “Shout!” song. Players gathering in the middle of the locker room, just before taking the field, to say the Lord’s Prayer – “and then you hear Jim (Kelly, the Hall of Fame quarterback) in the bathroom throwing up, because he was nervous. … But if Jim threw up, he played amazing.”
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Kelly’s stomach must have gotten queasy a lot: The Bills went to the playoffs in two of Radecic’s three years.
His memories are rooted in winning. But still, he’s a designer. He looks forward, and when he thinks about the current stadium, he translates that into ideas for improving the next one. As we descend from the roof to the playing field, Radecic is recounting conversations he’s had with Bills owner Terry Pegula, with whom he shares an alma mater, Penn State.
“I’ve said, ‘If you’re going in the locker room and you think it’s too big, it’s my fault,’ ” Radecic says, with the smile of a guy who seems perfectly OK with taking the blame for taking care of players. “ ‘If you think the hydrotherapy pools are too big, that’s my fault, too. If you think the warmup room is too big, that’s my fault!’ ”
Downstairs, Radecic walks us onto the future playing field, which is dotted with tools and trailers and construction debris, and then into the Bills’ home locker room. It’s noticeably larger than the Bills’ current game day locker room (think of the difference between walking into a classroom versus a spacious cafeteria), and it’s adjacent to an expansive training and recovery area, and a space that will be utilized as an indoor warmup field to keep players dry before bad-weather games.
For Radecic, these ideas aren’t new. He worked as an architectural engineer with the Bills even before Terry and Kim Pegula bought the team in 2014, and he’s been thinking of Buffalo stadiums for nearly 15 years now.
“You know how many times we’ve studied that building to see how we could improve it?” he says. While the former athlete in him is appreciative of the memories, the designer in him knows the flaws all too well.
The locker room is too small. The single tunnel that funnels onto the field is less than the NFL requires. It’s inefficient to move around. The need for significant maintenance is constant. The list goes on, and it's a product of nothing more than age. The current stadium is simply …
Treasured, even historical. But soon to be a part of history.
“The building has just reached its end,” Radecic says. “I can’t wait until August of '26, when people come in this building to see this first game.”
Follow Tim O'Shei on Twitter @timoshei.
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