Businesses giddy over Portland baseball possibility

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Though a Major League Baseball Opening Day in Portland is at least 5 years away, businesses in the Rose City are firmly behind Tuesday’s announcement by the Portland Diamond Project .

The group announced they signed a letter of intent to buy the 33-acre parcel of land at Zidell Yards along the South Waterfront. That doesn’t mean Portland will get an MLB team, but it certainly helps. And it fired up local businesses who may benefit from what a big league team can bring.

“It could mean a lot,” said Zo Geare, the floor lead at Hello From Portland . “Lots of people are traveling here and lots of people want to take a little piece of Portland home.”

They’re not strangers from the impact of major local sports.

“I do see a lot of people just walking around the streets wearing their jerseys, or when there’s a Timbers game they’re wearing their scarves and it just like brings a trickle of a couple more customers in here,” she said. “I’m always hearing about, like, what happened at the game or, like, how great it was and things like that. Honestly, like, any event that brings, like, a spirited group of people to the neighborhood would be positive for every business in the neighborhood.”

At the Independent Sports Bar and Grill , Adriana MacCoy and Christie Carson agreed.

“Another sports venue would bring more business to us, for sure,” MacCoy said.

Carson said the Independent tries “to pride ourselves on being both a Mariners bar and a Dodgers bar, so having something in town would be very good for business, obviously.”

Having a stadium along the South Waterfront would be great, all said.

“It livens up the neighborhood,” Geare said.

“We would love that, for sure, because it would generate more business. So since we’re already getting that amount of people for, you know, Seattle Seahawks and other teams that aren’t even local to us, just having a local team would probably make that three times as much,” MacCoy said.

“Portland baseball,” Carson said. “It would absolutely change.”

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