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Parents and student athletes at Grant High School have long sought to add lights and seats to the school’s sports field, known as Grant Bowl, so students can practice at night and host games on the field. But new obstacles crop up at every turn.
This time, it’s a couple of disgruntled neighbors who have demanded that the city conduct a traffic impact study on the effects of increased field use.
Meganne Steele, a local resident who has been vocal about her concerns with the bowl at Portland School Board meetings, also sent a message to a community group in August calling for the study. “We don’t want to unnecessarily restrict use of the Bowl, nor do we want our neighborhood spoiled by overwhelming traffic jams that spillover on side streets,” she wrote.
Surveys collected by both sides of the dispute suggest that skeptics are hugely outnumbered. Still, on Dec. 3, during a pre-application conference, city officials informed Grant Bowl advocates they’d need to conduct a traffic study.
Bora Architects estimates it will cost $14,250, says Virginia La Forte, who is part of the nonprofit Grant Bowl Community Coalition that’s fundraising for lights and seats at the field.
La Forte says the coalition expects to shoulder the cost from donated funds. But she’s not happy about it: “We’d hate to think that they’re offloading an expense like this to a nonprofit.”