Hammer’s Lot owner has front-row seat for Bills stadium construction

It’s a Thursday morning in early spring and a drone is in the air, taking photos from a parking lot near the new Buffalo Bills stadium.

The team can detect any aerial activity in the area, so a security guard working at the Orchard Park construction site comes to see what’s going on.

When he sees it’s Eric Matwijow, he smiles and says, “Oh. It’s just you.”

Matwijow, 67, who has never hesitated to share his opinion in the neighborhood, is quite well known in and around the construction site.

Not only is his parking lot adjacent to the construction zone, but Matwijow and his wife also live across the street on Abbott Road, in front of the current stadium and playing field, in a home owned by his family for almost 100 years.

“It’s my neighborhood, but the neighborhood is changing. It’s gone from the old farmers’ fields to what we see today,” said Matwijow, a longtime roofer. “But I think it’s happened in a lot of places.” You can’t stop progress, I guess.

As a result, Matwijow now has one of the best seats in the house to watch the construction of the new stadium, without being on the construction site itself.

His lot, better known to Bills fans everywhere as Hammer’s Lot, encroaches on the project to the south, behind the new stadium, where an auxiliary and technology building is being constructed.

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