CLEVELAND — Downtown Cleveland's April momentum continues to fly high. All eyes have been on Progressive Field with the Guardians having the best record in Major League Baseball. And at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on Monday night, the Cavs are hoping to win a second game in their series against the Orlando Magic.
Cleveland is still riding the wave of the NCAA Women's Final Four and total eclipse weekend.
During that stretch from April 4 to April 8, the Huntington Convention Center said more than 20,000 people joined their fan events for the Women's Final 4.
The Great Lakes Science Center told 3 News around 36,800 people attended their three-day total eclipse festival.
On Monday, Geraci Slice Shop told us that they had a 20 to 30 percent boost in sales that special weekend.
We then asked the owner Chelsea Williams if they are expecting extra foot traffic for the Cavs game 2 against the Magic Monday night.
"Oh, absolutely," she said. "Any time that we make it into the postseason is great for us. Any time that the team's on top, that's great for the downtown businesses. We really want to get all the people from the suburbs to come downtown and see us. Even though it's Monday, it's sunny, it's nice, everybody wants to be out for Cleveland for a party. So yeah, I do not expect a typical Monday. I expect Cleveland to show up and show out."
The manager for Harry Buffalo Dom Nelson is also feeling optimistic, predicting a 10 to 15 percent bump in sales for the Cavs game.
"It's great, I mean, we're right here," he said pointing to Rocket Mortgage Field House just a block away. "This is the first, if you want to get to the game in two minutes, our business is literally the first business here. So it's going to be fun. Busy as always."
The organization Downtown Cleveland, Inc. said with the hype surrounding the Cavs and Guardians success right now, they are going going to scale up their efforts to propel downtown.
Place Programs & Social Media Manager Ian Meadows hopes the Cavs make a deep playoff run so they can create some new promos for the Cleveland area.
"We can share that here are the reasons why you should come downtown early and stay late after the games," he explained. "Here are the local businesses to support. So really just sort of building this energy, not so much doing specific things ourself, but more so just rallying around everything else going on and just helping to promote downtown Cleveland, helping to showcase all the amazing things that there are to do here, all the amazing places to go, businesses to support, just really sort of building up that civic pride and the excitement that people have. So we could really just sort of steward all that together and make it really exciting for everybody."