At times it felt like a night at the ballpark, as rounds of applause filled the Oaklawn Grange, a banquet hall in Cranston, Tuesday night after residents voiced their support of the Pawsox stadium staying in Rhode Island.

The location of the event, put on by team executives including Vice Chairman Mike Tamburro and Chief Financial Officer Joseph Goldberg, was in House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s neighborhood. Mattiello said in a television interview on Jan. 22 that the residents he had talked to wouldn’t want to foot the bill for a new Pawsox stadium.

Mattiello didn’t attend the meeting.

The bill for the $85 million project, $26 million of which the state would pay for and $18 million of which the city of Pawtucket would cover, has passed through the Senate but now sits in the House.

The opposition to the bill by Speaker Mattiello prompted the outreach event.

During the presentation, the team executives hammered the point that the $54 million that the team would contribute to the stadium was the most a minor league team had contributed in “at least ten years,” as Goldberg said.

Goldberg also said that the stadium would not only generate millions of dollars in revenue from the team, but also through the “countless” other events that would be held year-round, such as concerts. He said, without getting into any specific companies, that they had plenty of corporate sponsors who were calling to be involved with the new stadium, including many local companies.

Tamburro, meanwhile, tried to connect on a personal level with the 70 or more in attendance. He spoke about the enjoyment Rhode Islanders get from going to a game and he called out the one person at the Grange wearing a Yankee hat.

The proposed stadium has 7,500 stationary seats and an additional 2,500 seats around the rest of the ballpark. Tamburro said that they’d like for it to be a night of entertainment, rather than just “sitting in one seat the whole night to watch the game.”

The location of the stadium was also brought up during the presentation. The stadium, they said, would be situated in the downtown area of Pawtucket at the old Apex Department store site and would be very visible from route 95, which Goldberg said would attract companies to advertise with them because there’s “no better visibility than that.”

After the presentation, attendees who spoke up voiced support of the bill. One man gave an anecdote of having a great time going to a game, to which he received a hefty applause.

The bill sits on the House floor currently and if they vote it down, as Speaker Mattiello predicts, it could be re-worked by the House Finance Committee. Until then, the Pawsox contingent is doing everything they can to make sure the deal goes through.