OAKLAND — Standing in his motorcycle shop on E. 10th Street, Tyler Carson had trouble envisioning how a 30,000-seat baseball stadium could be plopped down two blocks away. He could, however, imagine the foot traffic and parking nightmares if the Oakland Athletics decide to build near Laney College.

“I’m upset they painted half the curb across the street red,” Carson, who has owned Hayasa Motorbikes since 1998, said wryly. “They will have to put in a huge amount of infrastructure here.”

Two blocks in the other direction, on E. 12th Street, Jose Macias was of the opposite opinion.

“It would fit with what’s happening around the lake,” said Macias, whose family has owned La Estrellita Cafe and restaurant since 1969.

A move would be historic for the Oakland A’s. Since arriving on the West Coast from Kansas City in 1968, the team has played at the Coliseum. After attempts to move to Fremont and San Jose over the past decade, a shake-up in the front office brought a renewed commitment to stay in Oakland, led by A’s President Dave Kaval. But staying in the aging, decrepit concrete Goliath in East Oakland is not an option; a new stadium, whether at the Coliseum site or elsewhere in the city, is the future.

The A’s have so far narrowed their search to three locations: the Coliseum land, Howard Terminal northwest of Jack London Square, and the Peralta Community College District headquarters near Laney College. The team has said publicly that it will announce its decision this year, and officially, all three proposed sites are under equal consideration.

But momentum appears to be building for the Peralta site. While many support the idea of revitalizing the area, there are concerns over how a 30,000-plus seat stadium would impact Laney College and the surrounding neighborhoods where small businesses and homes are intermingled.

The northwest side of the aging college district headquarters, at E. 8th Street and 5th Avenue, abuts a channel connecting the Oakland estuary to Lake Merritt. A BART maintenance yard sits across 5th Avenue to the east, and across E. 8th Street to the north are Laney’s ballfields.

And towering just west of the college is Interstate 880 — the mighty, often congested, Nimitz. The 13 acres might be a cozy squeeze for a ballpark, but depending on how it’s configured, fans’ views from inside could include downtown Oakland and Lake Merritt. BART is a nine-minute walk away.

Reesa Tansey, a senior consultant at Colliers International, said the area in the shadow of the proposed stadium has remained largely untapped by new and larger businesses.

“You have a very diverse residential neighborhood,” she said. “You have pockets of some industrial, but there can be major retail arteries … where I think there are opportunities.”

The college is not an island like the Coliseum and Howard Terminal sites, cut off by distance or barriers from the surrounding neighborhoods. The heart of Eastlake emerges within blocks of Laney. Car wash and auto body shops, Asian grocery markets and mom-and-pop stores serve one of Oakland’s most diverse neighborhoods from 1st Avenue to 14th Avenue along International Boulevard and side streets.

The neighborhood is used to change, but squeezing in a development the size of a baseball stadium could have impacts never before seen, said Ener Chiu, associate director of real estate development at the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation. The nonprofit began working in Eastlake in the 1990s, when the population of southeast Asian and Chinese immigrants began to rise.

The 94606 zip code that includes Eastlake has a sizable Asian population at 42 percent, 2010 U.S. Census data shows. Of that, half are Chinese and 8 percent Vietnamese. Language barriers exist, with many shop owners speaking little to no English. On a recent visit, proprietors communicated with customers in their native tongue inside a bridal shop, Asian grocery stores and two massage businesses in the neighborhood.

Business was booming, even on a weekday. On Monday around lunch time, the dim sum restaurant at the corner of 4th Avenue and E. 12th was teeming with customers. No table was available, and the front door kept shutting and opening every couple of seconds with what seemed like an endless stream of customers.

According to the census, 90 percent of the households in Eastlake are renters and many have moved to the area over the past decade, suggesting high household turnover.

“(The statistic) suggests that most of the folks are short-term residents and don’t have a lot of housing security, making them very susceptible to displacement,” Chiu said. He added residents on the other side of Laney in Chinatown would also be vulnerable.

“Nobody is interested in freezing a neighborhood, but we are interested in how this could disrupt people who have the least amount of control of their day to day,” Chiu said.

Still, multiple merchants along E. 12th Street and International Boulevard, even those who do not own their buildings, showed no signs of putting up a fight if the team became their new neighbor.

“It’ll bring life into this place,” said Frank Yin, who owns Fine Concept Furniture on 5th Avenue. Yin and others got a taste of a big crowd two weeks ago, when an estimated one million people descended on Oakland for the Warriors parade and rally at the south end of Lake Merritt.

Carlos Ortiz, who owns Oakland Collision Center, charged people $40 to park in his lot. “They filled it up,” Ortiz said.

So far, the idea has received little public pushback from Peralta Chancellor Jowel Laguerre. Laguerre held an initial meeting with the A’s, but said it is the team’s decision to make.

“We’ll react to that,” he said. “Keeping the A’s in town is everybody’s business.”

Jennifer Shanoski, incoming president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers, said there are concerns over parking impacts, where the district office would be relocated and where any money the district gets from a land deal would be spent.

There is, however, a history of fighting outside development on the college campus, which serves about 14,000 students a semester. In 1992, then-Laney football coach Stan Peters and others objected to a plan by Kaiser Permanente to build a hospital on the football and baseball fields. They were successful in stopping the development and saved the fields from moving to another one of the district’s campuses.

“They need to start protesting right now. They can’t wait,” said Peters, who retired in 2006 after 40 years as a coach and instructor. The campus “is going to get destroyed if it happens.”