Skip to main content
At a December meeting, Grant High School parents and student athletes learned they’d have to shell out about $15,000 to conduct a traffic impact study—the latest hurdle in a yearslong fight to install lights and seats at the sports field known as Grant Bowl.
The news came as some neighbors demanded the city conduct a traffic impact study to assess the effects of increased field use with lights installed, concerned about how more activity might spoil the neighborhood. The group backing the project, the Grant Bowl Community Coalition, asked why it was required to shoulder the burden—but ultimately financed the study.
Now, the results are in, and the traffic study has found lights would not affect traffic between 4 and 6 pm, the peak period, and would have no impacts on pedestrian or cyclist safety.
Virginia La Forte, a co-founder of the coalition, says the group also spent $5,000 on a parking survey “to be proactive.” That survey found “plenty of available on-street parking for residents during evening sports events,” read the Bora Architecture memo.
The architecture firm added: “The addition of field lighting will allow the school to shift the start time of the Grant Bowl events to after 5 pm, which will improve parking availability for residents.”
“The traffic impact study and parking analysis confirm what we’ve long known—the Grant Bowl can safely accommodate field lighting with minimal impact on the surrounding neighborhood,” says Miro Wesener, a Grant parent and member of the coalition.
The news came as a relief to coalition members, who are now pushing forward with the project. La Forte says the group is finalizing their application to bring lights to the field. The coalition forecasts it will cost $500,000 to $560,000 for lights, architects and related logistics (including the studies).
Grant is the only 6A athletics school in the state without lights on its sports field, and also the only school in the Portland Interscholastic League without them. Student athletes have had to travel to Delta Park and other faraway fields, missing classes in the process.
“We can’t wait for Grant teams to see their friends and neighbors cheering them on under Friday night lights,” La Forte says. “This isn’t just for Grant teams. It’s for the entire student body”