Elliot Njus/Staff
The Portland Diamond Project will open a pop-up retail store downtown as it looks to build credibility on a national stage and win over baseball skeptics at home.
The Portland Diamond Clubhouse opens at noon Saturday. The storefront, at 1919 S.W. Morrison St., sits in the shadow of Providence Park, a stadium with a long baseball history as the home of the minor-league Portland Beavers.
The storefront will serve as a public relations headquarters as well as a merchandise outlet at least through next spring.
"We're at an exciting phase of the project," said Craig Cheek, the former Nike executive who leads the Portland Diamond Project. "We wanted a more public space where we can engage with the community and have some fun."
One wall is given over to interview space, with "MLB PDX" spelled out in baseballs as the backdrop. Another wall is given over to a petition to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred; the team hopes to deliver 50,000 signatures supporting a major-league team in Portland by spring training.
Ballcaps and T-shirt sales won't pay to build a $1 billion-plus ballpark, so the group is donating profits from its sales to Friends of Baseball, a Portland youth baseball nonprofit.
The Diamond Project has said it has the financial backing to build the park with little public money, but it has kept secret the identities of its major benefactors.
The group made a splash last week when it announced a preliminary agreement to build the stadium on the site of a Northwest Portland marine cargo terminal owned by the Port of Portland.
It also released renderings of the 32,000-seat stadium it's proposing, complete with a retractable windowed dome and a gondola that would provide an aerial view of the game.
City officials last week started working to figure out how to serve the stadium and related development with roads, transit and utilities sufficient for baseball-season crowds.
Meanwhile, Diamond Project officials will travel to the Major League Baseball winter meetings. Baseball executives will gather in Las Vegas next week, and the Diamond Project hopes to build support for a team's relocation to Portland, or else gauge the appetite for a league expansion that includes the city.
If it manages to lure a team, the most optimistic timeline for building a stadium would put opening day in 2023.
Elliot Njus/Staff
The Portland Diamond Clubhouse will operate out of the former temporary Timbers merchandise store across from Providence Park.
Elliot Njus/Staff
Elliot Njus/Staff
The pop-up serves as part retail store, part public relations headquarters and part museum of Portland baseball history.
Elliot Njus/Staff
Elliot Njus/Staff
The bathroom is wallpapered baseball cards.
Elliot Njus/Staff
Elliot Njus/Staff
Portland Diamond Project President Craig Cheek is the first to sign a wall-sized petition that the project plans to deliver to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.
Elliot Njus/Staff
Elliot Njus/Staff
-- Elliot Njus
enjus@oregonian.com; 503-294-5034; @enjus
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