Grand Central

Changing lanes

January 19, 2024

Wade Nkrumah (The Oregonian)

Call them bowling lounges or boutique bowling centers or, in some cases, nightclubs that happen to have pins and balls rolling around in the background. Just don't use that oh-so-20th century term: bowling alley. When Portland's Grand Central Bowl recently reopened after a two-year, $14-million renovation, it had a new name, a radically different mission and a growing amount of company at the high end of the bowling business nationwide. "The '00s might be described as the decade of luxury bowling," said Fred Groh, managing editor of the industry magazine International Bowling Industry. "For the first time, bowling is finding itself an upscale ambience." Los Angeles-based Lucky Strike Lanes is among the trend's early leaders, with centers in 17 cities from Washington, D.C., to Bellevue, Wash. They offer pool, VIP lounges and gourmet menus, as well as strictly enforced dress codes. In Tampa, Fla., Splitsville sits on prime bayfront real estate near the city's tony downtown arena, scattering a dozen lanes among bars and high-end restaurant seating. Closer to home, Players opened last year in Lake Oswego emphasizing everything except its bowling. Hand-tossed pizza, a sports bar and rooms suited for bachelor and bachelorette parties are intended to underscore how this is a different kind of place. And in Southeast Portland's gritty Central Eastside Industrial District, what is now known as Grand Central Restaurant and Bowling Lounge features high-def music videos and Trail Blazers games on Jumbotrons, a bank of 50-inch flat-screen televisions suspended over a long bar, a row of booths with picture windows and gas fireplaces available to warm patrons watching personal-size flat screens. Visitors chatter over the thump of music as much as the noise of crashing pins. For Rob May, out recently with his wife, Nadine, and 7-year-old son, Charlie, the scene "doesn't feel like you're committed to bowling." "It feels," he said, "like you're committed to a night out." Reasons for the shift are easy to understand. The number of league bowlers registered with the United States Bowling Conference has dropped from about 9 million in 1980 to 3.25 million last year. And the number of U.S. bowling alleys is about half today what it was in the early 1960s, when it peaked at 11,000. But the tide, some think, has started to turn. For the first time in decades, about as many new bowling alleys opened as old ones closed. "We finally kind of leveled off the last year or two," said Mark Miller of the bowling conference. Most of the growth, he said, has come from family-oriented entertainment centers -- imagine the Family Fun Center in Wilsonville, but with bowling -- or upscale, downtown boutiques like Grand Central. Most of the closures have been traditional alleys, many dating to the middle of the last century or earlier. Grand Central, Miller said, is pretty typical for the boutique types. "They do tend to be in bigger cities," he said. "They do tend to be in the downtown area." Portland developer John Plew said he knew all about the trends before he and three business partners bought Grand Central with an eye toward something different. "To me, it was, 'How do you make bowling more of a cool experience?' " Plew said. A dozen lanes replaced what was once 28. They're bookended by oversized video screens and couches and coffee tables, and stone-accented walls with fireplaces and flat-screen TVs, and conference/party rooms with 50-inch flat screens and Internet connections overlooking the scene. "There's no video games here, by design," Plew said. That goes along with the rule about no children allowed after 9 p.m. It's all fine with Nadine May. "I was never interested in bowling," she said, "because I felt like every time I went bowling I felt like I had to get fries, pizza and stale beer." Visitors will find something different at Grand Central. "We have champagne all the way up to Dom Perignon," Plew said. And then, in a nod, perhaps, to the little guy, he conceded, "We have affordable champagne, too." Hand-in-hand with the new menu, not much comes cheap at Grand Central anymore, at least by traditional bowling standards. Hourly rates for games range from $36 to $60, and paying by the game costs $4 to $7. In Northeast Portland, changes embraced by bowling lounges are on the radar of Jerriann Cronk, general manager and an 18-year employee at 48-lane Hollywood Bowl. But, she said, plans to remodel the bar and restaurant to create more of a sports-bar feel are aimed at tournament bowlers and community-based fundraising events. "Bowling lounges can't accommodate tournaments and fundraisers the size that we have," Cronk said. "I have very large fundraisers that take up all 48 lanes, and they have five to six people on a lane." Bowlers, too, are weighing the changing landscape. Southwest Portland resident Ray Martin, 30, joins a group of friends weekly at 24-lane Kellogg Bowl in Milwaukie for the Monday night special: $1.50 per game bowling, $1.50 for shoes and $1.50 draft beer. "If you're a bowler, you don't need ritzy," Martin said. "You don't need expensive drinks. You don't need fancy lanes. You don't need fancy lights. You just wanna bowl." His buddy, 30-year-old Damon Kenyon of Northwest Portland, also likes Kellogg's old-school stylings. "All the new places have the synthetic lanes," he said. "We like the real wood lanes. That kind of bowling is a lot better." Still, even he's curious about the new Grand Central. "That sounds fun," he said. "I think we'll give it a try. Why not?" For Mark Cockcroft, a 41-year-old Northeast Portland resident who remembers bowling at the old Grand Central in the 1990s, the shift is welcome. "It's cozy, it's comfortable, it's modern," he said of the revised digs. "You've got couches, fireplaces, your own personal TV." There's only one problem, he said. "If you could just get rid of the bowling noise, we'd have a hell of a place here."