Dunn Tire Park

Baseball game at Dunn Tire Park

Dunn Tire Park is a baseball-only facility in Buffalo, New York. It is home to the Buffalo Bisons Triple-A baseball team.

The stadium opened on April 14, 1988 as Pilot Field, with a sell-out crowd of 19,500 on hand. While Oriole Park at Camden Yards often is cited as the vanguard for the trend in American cities towards “retro”-styled, baseball-only stadiums located in downtown cores, the architectural firm that designed Camden Yards, HOK Sport, actually cut its teeth on the design of Dunn Tire Park, which opened nearly four years prior to Camden Yards.

At the time of the stadium’s construction, Buffalo was hoping to secure either an expansion major-league baseball team or a relocated team. The Montreal Expos and Pittsburgh Pirates were often mentioned as a leading contender in the latter category and Buffalo was one of the four finalists in the 1993 National League expansion derby, which brought the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins to major-league baseball. When completed, however, the stadium seated fewer than 20,000 people. While this was a large number of seats for a minor-league facility, it was dwarfed by many major-league parks. Thus, the design made provisions for future expansion that would have allowed the seating capacity to grow to nearly 40,000 by adding an upper deck above the existing mezzanine should a major-league team decide to relocate to Buffalo.

In the first season the Bisons played at the stadium, the team shattered the previous minor-league attendance record, as many Buffalonians and visitors traveled downtown to enjoy the amenities offered by the new facility, which replaced the old War Memorial Stadium as the Bisons’ home. In this first season, the Bisons became the first minor-league team to draw over 1 million fans during a season, and the team outdrew a number of major-league teams in 1988.

After several years as Pilot Field, there was a dispute involving the naming rights to the stadium following Pilot Air Freight’s defaulting on naming rights payments. For part of a season, the stadium was known locally simply as “The Downtown Ballpark.” In July 1995, however, another company stepped in and acquired the naming rights, and the stadium became known as “North AmeriCare Park.” The stadium was to maintain this moniker for only a few years, however. Prior to the start of the 1999 season, Dunn Tire, a local chain of retail tire outlets, became the naming rights holder for the stadium.

The stadium has been home to Ballpark Brawl since 2003.

Dunn Tire Park is served by the Seneca station on the Buffalo Metro Rail.