Buffalo News
Developments by Jem, a construction and development and project management consulting company in Buffalo, was brought on a few weeks ago to start engaging with local minority business owners to ensure diversity hiring goals can be met with Western New York businesses.
It provides an extra layer of oversight for meeting project goals for workforce development during construction, and then afterward with community contributions and engagement and retailer and vendor involvement at the new stadium.
Officials from the state and Erie County , which together will provide $850 million in public money toward the project, have said so far that there have been mixed results in compliance with the goals of the construction agreement.
The hiring of Developments by Jem was announced Monday by the nine-member Community Benefits Oversight Committee at Highmark Stadium as it met for the first time almost a year after the oversight committee's forming was agreed to as part of the signing of a Community Benefits Agreement.
"We wanted to have a community engagement coordinator," said Penny Semaia , vice president for stadium relations with the Bills, who is serving as director of the oversight committee. "We're getting excited for where we're going to launch into their involvement in making sure we know and are engaged with the voice of the community. They're helping us identify where the needs are.
"We're still building out the framework of their involvement and engagement, but they'll be part of a lot of different community events — some construction-related and some not."
The Bills must submit an annual report and data throughout the year to the oversight committee on the team's efforts to meet its requirements.
The first fiscal year for the oversight committee ends in March, and Semaia said the team will need some time to compile that information for the annual report, which is expected to be completed midyear.
Semaia was asked by board members to provide a snapshot of the annual report at the next meeting, which will be in April, although an exact date was not yet agreed upon.
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"What we do here represents more than one generational opportunity," said board member Maria Whyte , chief community impact officer and chief of staff at the Community Foundation .
"If we only build a stadium, (even) if it's a stadium where the Bills win a Super Bowl , we will not have succeeded," she added. "We have to build a stadium, and we have to grow the local economy in a way that meaningfully brings more participation into the economic process, and that includes both our business owners and workforce."
The Bills are required to make and document a "good faith effort" to achieve, at minimum, an overall participation goal of 30% for minority- and women-owned businesses — 15% each, as well as a 6% goal for service-disabled veteran-owned businesses.
The team will then be required to contribute $3 million a year, for 30 years, to the community as part of the stadium deal. Decisions on how that money is spent should be made in consultation with the committee. The agreement also calls for 30% of all retailers and vendors operating at the stadium to be companies that are owned by women and minorities.
The Rev. Mark Blue , a board member, pastor of Second Baptist Church of Lackawanna and president of the Buffalo branch of the NAACP , asked for a history of the community activities the Bills have been part of and how much will change once the new stadium is completed to help establish a benchmark for the future.
"Hopefully the community will see a change and shift in the environment — the paradigm shift that is going to take place in our community," Blue said.
After a slow start that led to criticism from some Erie County officials and Empire State Development , Gilbane/Turner has been coming into compliance with the goals in the contract, Steve Ranalli , president of the Erie County Stadium Corp. , said earlier this year. More outreach in the community has been conducted, and additional efforts made to split up work into as many packages as possible to involve more contractors, Ranalli previously said.
In a recent statement, Gilbane/Turner said it has involved 79 small, minority-, women- and service disabled-veteran-owned firms in the construction of the stadium, and more than half of those companies are from Western New York .
"We realize that our Community Benefits Agreement is an amazing and historic opportunity for the entire county," said Semaia, who's been with the Bills for six months. "We wanted to establish what we're going to do as our meetings progress, and understand what information we need, what reports we want to have and also the cadence of how often we want to meet."
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