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Even as the COVID-19 pandemic persists, construction work is continuing in the Portland-metro area.

The Wingspan Event & Conference Center, for instance, is being tackled by general contractor/construction manager Swinerton Builders within a stone’s throw of the Hillsboro Airport, at the corner of Northeast 34th Avenue and Veterans Drive. LRS Architects designed the 89,000-square-foot facility, which will feature mass timber and much more.

鈥淚t’s really an interesting project in that you have a lot of different buildings thrown together to make up the architecture,鈥� Swinerton Builders senior project manager John Ciepiela said. 鈥淵ou have structural steel over joists on the lower roof sections. The main gallery and conference and meeting rooms are mass timber over structural steel. And the main expo hall space is made of mega-trusses over structural steel brace framing.鈥�

The $52 million project is being developed by the partnership of Washington County, the city of Hillsboro and the Washington County Visitors Association. The Wingspan Event & Conference Center is expected to become the heart of Westside Commons 鈥� a multiuse campus being created to revitalize the aging Washington County Fairgrounds.

The new facility will host fair-related functions and large community events, including regional and national conferences. The main exposition hall will have roughly 39,000 square feet of floor space; partitions will allow the space to be split into smaller sections. A 13,000-square-foot conference hall will be able to host smaller events on its own or in combination with the main expo hall. An additional 3,000 square feet of meeting space will be provided for smaller meetings and lectures.

A spacious entry plaza will be next to the lobby, and a full commercial kitchen, concessions area and office will serve the entire building. An outdoor exhibit area on the west side of the building will provide an opening into the campus.

The building’s name comes from its most noticeable feature: a gracefully sloping roof section covering the east end.

鈥淎esthetically, that project is pretty fantastic,鈥� said Swinerton Mass Timber superintendent Tym, who goes by only one name. 鈥淲hen you see the wingspan, as you approach it, there is something very retro about it that gives you a 1950s airport look. The thing that’s most exciting about mass timber, coming from a concrete background, where everything is gray with architectural features, is the vibrancy and the lines and shape and the efficiency of the erection process; as a builder it’s exciting to see.鈥�

Inside, there are corridors taller than 30 feet and sloping ceilings with exposed cross-laminated timber panels. That said, the construction process pairing those panels with structural steel, Tym added, proved painstaking.

鈥淭he really high ceilings in the corridors have beam profiles that taper and slope,鈥� he said. 鈥淓very time you’re dealing with an application of mass timber and sloped lines, it’s an incredible challenge to interface with all those steel elements.鈥�

Ciepiela explained the assembly.

鈥淵ou basically have brace frames and structural steel coming into an aesthetic architectural piece,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou’re dealing with 3-D angle assessment and mass-timber connections that are (intersecting) knife plates. Then you have buckle connections and there’s also long-span, 75-foot glulam beams; the sistering of those beams took some structural ingenuity from Nishkian Dean, the structural engineer.鈥�

The project team broke ground in September 2018, and construction of the building began in February 2019. Substantial completion is expected sometime this spring.

Exterior work has been largely completed. Dozens of electricians and other tradespeople are installing the miles of wiring needed to power the facility and enable communications and audio/visual equipment.

Swinerton’s own carpenters are on the site self-performing drywall, carpentry and related scopes of work.

The unique design presented particular challenges for builders in regard to mechanical systems and a large curtainwall system, Ciepiela said. A delicate lifting operation was required to place large air-handling units inside the rooftop penthouse 鈥� with the cross-laminated timber roof already in place. Envelope considerations complicated other work.

鈥淲e have glazing curtainwall interfacing with mass timber at interesting negative angles going out,鈥� he said. 鈥淪tructurally it’s not as simple as just setting glass frames up and down.鈥�

Projects like this are helping broaden the mass-timber market as a whole, Tym said.

鈥淲e’re able to share the lessons we’ve learned from a high-level CM-GC perspective, and we’re making it possible for these public jobs to envision what a mass-timber solution looks like,鈥� he said.