Savannah Bananas bring in record crowds, business boost to Denver’s ballpark district

The Savannah Bananas flag flew over Denver’s ballpark district this weekend. And the teams didn’t just bring tens of thousands of fans into Coors Field with them, but also in and around all the restaurants in the district.

Traffic was bananas. Business was bananas. And some people were dressed as literal bananas.

One fan shared when they got the tickets, “We screamed. We were so excited, me and all my friends, and then we immediately tried to strategize on how we were gonna, like, actually get the tickets, like, Taylor Swift level.”

Similar to what many cities saw when Taylor Swift’s tour came to town, the Savannah Bananas brought their own economic appeal to Denver’s ballpark district.

Chip Wilson is the general manager of Cherry Cricket in the ballpark district, and his team has been preparing for the team’s visit for weeks.

“You’re talking about $10,000 a day in sales just based on them coming in,” Wilson said, “We have a lot of banana drinks. We have our banana shots. We have banana cream pie.”

More than 100,000 people are estimated to have come to the district this weekend, including hours before the games began.

“I got here at nine o’clock this morning, and there were tons of people just packing the streets, getting ready to go and have a fun time. It’s just, it’s invigorating,” Wilson said.

That infectious energy is something the new Ballpark General Improvement District and its treasurer, Stevenson Farnsworth, have been working to bring back.

“This is what we want to see, families in the neighborhood, this is exactly it,” Farnsworth said, “We are all local small businesses. And so encouraging folks to stay and enjoy their time here is really what this is about.”

Now, as those business owners serve up the last of their banana specials, locals hope the energy will stick around a whole bunch longer.

“I’m comfortable renaming Blake Street Banana Boulevard, or whatever that looks like,” Farnsworth said, “It’s easy to have a negative connotation of downtown. And this truly proves that that’s not the case.”