The U.S. Economic Development Administration has awarded the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition $41.4 million to develop and expand Oregon’s emerging mass-timber industry. The money is intended to address a worsening housing crisis, increasing threats of wildfires and the need for job creation in hard-hit communities.

The EDA will issue the award via its $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge. The OMTC is one of 21 coalitions selected from a nationwide pool of 529 applicants to receive funding through the challenge.

The OMTC is a partnership between the Port of Portland, Business Oregon, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Department of Land Conservation and Development, and the TallWood Design Institute – a collaboration between the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.

The grant money will support university research involving the use of mass timber in housing; spur development of a factory to produce mass-timber housing; fund forest restoration projects in the Willamette National Forest; jump-start public-private partnerships to grow employment in the creation and use of mass timber in housing; and support efforts to modernize building codes in Oregon communities impacted by recent wildfires to enable use of mass timber in housing.

President Joe Biden in April visited Portland International Airport as part of a national infrastructure tour and met with members of the OMTC. He observed the use of locally sourced mass timber in PDX’s new roof and learned how mass timber can be used in housing.

“This is a transformational moment for Oregon,” Port of Portland Executive Director Curtis Robinhold stated in a news release. “The project will create rural and urban jobs with products grown and manufactured right here in Oregon. The innovations will enable production of high-quality building products from low-quality wood. This will increase housing, provide jobs and promote forest health. That means more homes at lower costs, new workforce opportunities and more climate-resilient communities.”

The Port of Portland will use funding for site improvements that will lead to construction of a mass-timber housing factory at Terminal 2.

“Already a global leader in mass timber, the Northwest is poised to bring mass timber forward as a housing solution,” Iain Macdonald, director of the TallWood Design Institute, stated in the news release. “Mass timber allows for rapid construction using sustainable, locally sourced, low-carbon wood products.”

The Build Back Better funding will support a comprehensive strategy for expanding the mass-timber housing market:

• The money will accelerate mass-timber research and development efforts via construction of an acoustic testing laboratory at the University of Oregon and a fire testing facility at Oregon State University. Also, applied research at UO and OSU will advance via testing of mass-timber housing prototypes for structural, seismic, durability and energy performance.
• Federal investment will offset the costs of site development for a mass-timber modular home factory, the UO’s acoustics research lab and a fabrication facility at the Port of Portland’s Terminal 2. Planning for site improvements at T2 will begin immediately, with construction of the lab and site work expected to begin in 2024.
• Public-private partnerships will be developed to produce mass-timber homes at a greater pace and promote workforce training opportunities in advanced manufacturing and the use of mass timber in construction.
• The Oregon Department of Forestry will receive funding to implement forest restoration projects within the Willamette National Forest to improve resilience, reduce wildfire risk, and provide a sustainable supply for mass timber production. Resilience treatments will utilize a materials track-and-trace program to provide utilization and resource accountability.
• OSU will receive funding for research and development to modernize forest restoration practices, including improved forest inventory mapping, enhanced forest worker health and safety, and efficiency within wood supply chain activities. OSU also will develop workforce training curriculum to help promote employment in the forest and wood products industry.
• The Department of Land Conservation and Development will modernize development codes to support the use of mass timber in newly built modular workforce housing in 10 communities, prioritizing those impacted by wildfires in 2020.

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An effort to build a mass-timber manufacturing facility for affordable, modular housing at the Port of Portland has received a major boost from the Oregon Legislature and a federal grant program.

The Hacienda Community Development Corporation and the port were awarded $5 million from the Legislature during a special session on Monday night.

Earlier Monday, the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to create a strategy for a mass-timber manufacturing facility at Marine Terminal 2. The coalition advances as a finalist to compete for up to $100 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan.

The local group is aiming to jump-start housing production and support Oregon’s emerging mass-timber industry, officials stated.

“This partnership with the Port of Portland fills a gap for modular housing developed right here in Oregon, providing not only new housing options but job opportunities and new markets for Oregon wood products,” Hacienda CDC CEO Ernesto Fonseca stated.

Fonseca added that modular homes “could offer rapid response options to address housing shortages created by emergencies like wildfires.”

The coalition comprises the Port of Portland, Business Oregon, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Department of Land Conservation and Development, and the Tallwood Design Institute – a Corvallis-based partnership between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon.

The Oregon Department of Forestry plans to use the grant to partner with federal land managers to restore forests devastated by the 2020 Labor Day wildfires and provide wood fiber for mass timber construction, Deputy State Forester Kyle Abraham stated.

Oregon has quickly grown into a U.S. hub for mass timber. Riddle-based D.R. Johnson is a major manufacturer, and several Portland-based developers, architects and construction firms specialize in cross-laminated timber buildings.

Portland is home to the tallest CLT building, Carbon12, as well as major CLT commercial buildings such as District Office and Albina Yard. More are coming, including Sturgeon Development Partners‘ Flatworks building on Southeast Grand Avenue.

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As mass timber has gained appeal within the building industry, project teams have largely been addressing challenges as they arise. But the formation of a group of engineering, construction, architecture and fabrication firms could soon change that.

The REACTS (Research on Engineering, Architecture and Construction of Timber Structures) Consortium will begin looking at the most pressing questions about mass timber.

“It’s about a decision-making process to choose work and testing that will help innovate code or eliminate barriers and develop high-performance products,” said Iain Macdonald, director of the Corvallis-based Tallwood Design Institute.

The institute is comprised of members of Oregon State University‘s colleges of engineering and forestry and the University of Oregon‘s college of design. There on the OSU campus the REACTS Consortium will devise new subjects of research and carry out physical experiments at the Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory, which opened in 2019.

“The cooperative model is not uncommon in universities where you have outside stakeholders who contribute resources so they can get certain types of research done,” Macdonald said. “We’ve always done research that has heavy input from industry; we want research that has impact in the medium term, not blue-sky research necessarily.”

There are 16 firms presently involved in the consortium, which is still in the process of determining which issues it will focus on. More companies could join in the future, but for now the idea is to keep the group small and nimble.

“We’ve been talking in earnest over the last 15 months,” Macdonald said. “We talked with five or six companies in Portland we dealt with often and kicked around the idea to see who would be interested and what would work.”

There’s a three-tier structure under which companies pay different dues to help fund research. Other funding will come from state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service.

“The general philosophy is no matter what level member you are,” Macdonald said, “you have the ability to propose ideas and critique others.”

Ethan Martin, an associate with DCI Engineers of Portland, has been involved with research at OSU for a number of years. The consortium will focus largely on structural issues, including composite design involving mass timber and concrete or other combinations of materials, he said.

“This whole tall mass timber thing kind of came out of the blue for the wood industry,” he said. “It wasn’t a coordinated effort by any means, and now it is.”

Even with 2021 updates to the International Building Code accounting for mass-timber structures, Martin said, “tons of questions” still exist.

“Mass timber is in its infancy,” he said. “The idea behind the Tallwood Design Institute and REACTS is, again, we develop this code language for tall buildings and the framework is there. But the devil is in the details and a lot of the details have not been worked out.”

For Martin and others, however, there is satisfaction in figuring out those details.

“What else needs to be tested?” he asked. “Drift? Composite design? Stuff that is really going to be useful to keep mass-timber buildings rolling.”

Another issue that needs to be fleshed out is mass timber’s acoustic properties, said Graham Montgomery, technical director for Swinerton and its new Portland-based fabrication facility.

“It will definitely benefit what we bring to the table with jurisdictions and help everybody feel more comfortable with things because we’re actually testing these items,” Montgomery said.

Jonathan Heppner, a principal at Lever Architecture, the firm that designed the 12-story Framework mass-timber project that was canceled in 2017, said that one and others since have shown the need for a more coordinated approach within the industry. He likened the effort to a mobile phone, for which a variety of firms are responsible for the hardware, software and network needed to make it functional. Only by working together can the building industry successfully solve the outstanding issues around mass timber, he said.

“We’re just getting started,” Heppner said. “But ideally the consortium as a group can hit what we feel are the most targeted approaches to any of those topics and then maybe break out as groups and work out the research specific to those topics.”

Levi Huffman, technical director at DR Johnson, a Riddle-based fabricator of cross-laminated timber panels, agreed.

“We’ve grown with the market and have a sense there are challenges that we still have to overcome,” he said. “Any barriers, whether a structural design question or acoustics or sustainability for developers – those are items that come up that we need answers to. The thing with the REACTS Consortium is we can quickly identify the hurdles out there that we need to jump over.”

The Tallwood Design Institute, Huffman added, provides potentially costly resources that individual companies don’t have.

“Any time we have barriers that are broken down that make it easier for developers to develop a building, there are going to be more of them built and the demand for mass timber will go up,” he said. “It’s going to help grow the industry, break down barriers and keep this mass-timber movement going forward.”

Just one example of this, Heppner said, came up during the Framework project. The proposal for seismic resilience featured a rocking wall with an entirely exposed wood finish. A brace frame perhaps could have been superior, he said, but using mass timber to construct such elements hadn’t been done before.

“If you had something that was more of a brace frame solution it will have different implications for performance and for the user,” he said. “It’s a technology rather than a solution, and you’re just trying to find the best use of that. You want a lot of potential options to fit it into different scenarios that would come up.”

That kind of experimentation is exactly what the consortium is designed to tackle.

“Some of it really comes down to what will the jurisdiction allow,” Martin said. “That’s another opportunity for REACTS. We can design something, but if it’s not in the code, how does the building official know to accept it or not accept it? We’ve come up with some really cool stuff in California, but the official said, ‘Yeah, I see what you’re doing, but I don’t understand it and know how to approve it.’

“That’s one of the things REACTS will be able to help with also. When we come up with an idea that is valid, then we just need testing to prove it.”

Consortium members will have access to certain proprietary information and research results that come out of the effort. But the intent is to produce data that any firm can draw upon in the future, Macdonald said.

“We’ll see how it goes,” he said. “We’re not drawing a line under it. Some of these cooperatives have gone on for years and years, or basically as long as it’s required. There’s a lot of catch-up to do to generate the data and know-how for wood that we already have for concrete and steel. We’re still at the beginning of what mass timber can do.”

REACTS Consortium industry members

Gold level

Swinerton

Silver level

KPFF Consulting Engineers

Bronze level

Kaiser + Path

StructureCraft

MTC Solutions

DCI Engineers

SRG Partnership

U.S. Forest Service

Rothoblaas

MiTek

Odeh Engineers

DR Johnson

Katerra

Lever Architecture

Aspect Structural Engineers

Holmes Structures

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Much of the work by Kaiser Group and Path Architecture is found within a few blocks of the Boise and Eliot neighborhoods in inner North-Northeast Portland. That’s where projects like The Canyons, Carbon12 and The Radiator have helped demonstrate mass timber‘s potential as a building material.

Now, the rise in remote working technologies and software such as Revit has aided a new line of business for Kaiser + Path: consulting on mass-timber building projects around the world.

Kaiser + Path is advising project teams in Japan and New Zealand, as well as on the West Coast. Typically, the developers are most interested in cross-laminated timber and whether it’s a good fit for their projects, said Ben Kaiser, the local all-in-one firm’s founding partner.

“This is a worldwide conversation around the use of trees in mid- and high-rise buildings,” he said. “As our community grows, and our influence grows, so do our opportunities.”

More broadly, Kaiser + Path’s growing consulting work is a reflection of the rise of remote work and video conferencing technology. Increasingly, knowledge and expertise matter far more than location.

“There are no borders when it comes to computers talking to each other,” Kaiser said.

Architects can design on Revit software and have the CLT beams and other parts cut by a computer numerical control (CNC) machine abroad. For now, the two systems require an intermediary to communicate with each other, but a direct connection is coming, Kaiser believes.

“I bet within a year there will be a seamless connection,” he said.

The process cuts out shop drawings.

“Now we skip all that because the computer talks to the computer and cuts the product, with zero tolerance,” Kaiser said.

Oregon architects’ CLT consulting follows a path trod by their peers in British Columbia, Canada, where CLT construction first took off, said Iain Macdonald, director of the Tallwood Design Institute at Oregon State University. The rapid development of remote working technologies has accelerated consulting opportunities, he added.

“It’s more acceptable to not show up in person, so it cuts down on the cost as well,” he said.

Kaiser estimated that about 30 percent of his work hours go to consulting. Emily Dawson, Kaiser + Path’s partner and design principal, helps run the firm.

A big part of consulting jobs is persuading project owners of the benefits of CLT compared to more common steel-and concrete construction.

“We’re in the stage of convincing these development teams that mass timber is the way to go for the environment, for constructability,” Kaiser said.

In Oregon, lawmakers and business leaders have been keen to push mass timber as an economic development tool and a possible bridge for the state’s urban-rural divide.

Outside the state, environmental benefits are the top selling point. Mass-timber backers point to studies suggesting that such construction generates less greenhouse gas emissions than similar concrete and steel buildings.

“We came at the right time, because the entire world is now aware of the pressing issue of climate change,” Kaiser said. “People are really understanding with forest fires, flooding and the rise in temperatures, it’s significant.”

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Mass timber is quickly growing in scale as a preferred building material throughout North America, panelists said during a discussion on Thursday.

A tally maintained by the Wood Products Council, an industry group, counted 598 projects using mass timber in the design stage in North America in December 2020. Another 462 projects were built or under construction.

“There’s a mass-timber wave that is pulling through North America right now,” said Paul Fast, founder of structural design firm Fast + Epp.

The event, held virtually, was organized by CityAge and the Daily Journal of Commerce. Local panelists included Thomas Robinson, founder of LEVER Architecture, and Brad Nile, project executive at Andersen Construction.

Mass timber – a catchall term for products such as cross-laminated timber and mass plywood – has caught on as an environmentally friendly alternative to concrete. Proponents cite its lower carbon footprint and warm aesthetics.

Portland emerged in recent years as a center of mass timber in the United States, with an ecosystem of architects, developers, manufacturers and timber-industry boosters helping raise its profile. California, Washington and Oregon are the top three states for mass-timber building, according to the Wood Products Council.

“More and more we’re seeing clients who want to explore mass timber as the go-to option,” said Lucas Epp, head of engineering at StructureCraft in British Columbia.

Some developers are choosing mass timber because it accelerates construction, said Nathan Torgelson, director of the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections. In high-cost West Coast cities, a shorter timeline can mean significant savings, he said.

“We’re seeing that as a major advantage,” he said.

Several cross-laminated-timber projects are in review or under construction in Seattle. These include a Capitol Hill affordable-housing project; an 18-story residential project, also in Capitol Hill; and an eight-story office building in the South Lake Union neighborhood, Torgelson said.

Cross-laminated timber will have its largest U.S. project to date at Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. The retail giant is planning to use more than 1.7 million cubic feet of mass timber on several office buildings. Canada’s Structurlam is building a manufacturing plant in Arkansas to supply the material.

Different clients have different goals, which can lead to use of different materials, Robinson said. Mass timber is not just CLT, he noted, but also dowel-laminated timber, mass plywood and other products.

“It’s really a family of products, and understanding which member of the family to use in a particular project is very important,” Robinson said.

LEVER Architecture designed two mass-timber buildings totaling 460,000 square feet for Adidas’ North American headquarters in North Portland. The buildings were completed last year.

Robinson said more mass-timber buildings will be built as people see them in person.

“People are seeing the advantages and experiencing it as a space,” he said.

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For Ben Kaiser’s latest project in North Portland, the developer and architect drew upon influences as far away as Japan and as close to home as family.

The Canyons will open later this month at 3450 N. Williams Ave., near the intersection with Northeast Fremont Street. The 70-unit apartment building is intended to serve seniors seeking independent living units with convenient services.

Behind the six-story, 65-foot-tall building is a long, low-slung retail structure that creates an alleyway with the taller residential building. Kaiser expects a sushi restaurant, hair salon and salt retailer to open there after completion.

The project was designed before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but landed on a series of fortuitous choices with the help of partner Emily Dawson. For example, each unit has its own heating and cooling system, and does not share air with other spaces. Also, the corridors are open to outdoor air, and units are staggered in a sawtooth pattern so doors do not face each other.

“We weren’t planning on COVID, but we’re very happy with the outcome,” Kaiser said during a recent tour of the property. “It’ll be a post-COVID environment that’s safe.”

The property will also have 24-hour concierge and occasional visits from Metro West Ambulance medics for residents who want blood pressure checks or other minor medical screenings.

In a brief video on The Canyons website, Kaiser talks about the past search for ideal housing for his aging father. That influenced development of the building.

“The products here in the United States need a lot of work,” Kaiser said. “It’s either super expensive or practically uninhabitable. We’re trying to find the middle ground.”

The units do not have bathtubs, but do have unique features such as countertops that can be raised and lowered.

also has cross-laminated timber – a material heralded by Kaiser Group and Path Architecture. The Canyons shares a parcel with the team’s Carbon 12, which opened in 2018 and remains, for now, the tallest CLT building in the United States. For The Canyons, the team brought on R&H Construction, a local firm that had not previously built a CLT structure.

The innovative method of joining the CLT drew some initial skepticism from inspectors, said Iain Macdonald, executive director of the Tallwood Design Institute – a collaborative effort of Oregon State University, the University of Oregon and industry partners based in Corvallis. The CLT panels are connected to each other instead of to a beam or a wall.

“We did actually some testing for them because the building code guys had never seen CLT connected in that way before,” Macdonald said.

CLT panels were loaded up with concrete barriers to test the material’s hardiness. The wood panels passed with ease, Macdonald said.

“We used every piece of concrete we had in the lab,” he said. “It was a really pretty dramatic illustration of the strength of it.”

CLT for The Canyons came from Structurlam, a major manufacturer based in British Columbia.

Portland has been a leading U.S. market for CLT, with Kaiser among its earliest adopters. Developers and architects who have used CLT praise its warm aesthetics, lower carbon footprint compared to concrete, ability to meet fire and seismic codes, and connection to rural Oregon’s timber economy.

The Canyons is on track to hit its $36 million budget, Kaiser said. The project team was forced to pause twice during the pandemic because of COVID-19 cases, he noted.

As a development proposition, The Canyons – a rental product aimed at the middle of the market – complements Carbon 12, which has for-sale luxury condos. The retail buildings create a narrow alleyway with both The Canyons and Carbon 12, something Kaiser said was inspired by Japan’s dense, lively alleyways.

“Our hope is people fill in all through here,” he said.

Hoosiers, a Japanese company, is a partner in the project.

The building has substantial bike parking, but approximately 30 parking spaces are tucked underneath. Seniors still want motor vehicle parking, Kaiser said.

“It’s still definitely a market that requires parking citywide,” he said.

Interest from potential commercial tenants has picked up as Oregon gets a better grasp on the coronavirus pandemic, Kaiser said.

“We’re all learning how to live with this problem, and business is slowly coming out of its shell,” he said.

Any new development in the Eliot neighborhood – historically one of Portland’s Black community centers – brings uncomfortable questions of gentrification and displacement. Kaiser has been having those conversations with residents and business owners for many years. Some still don’t like him or his developments, he admitted, but it’s a conversation he knows is necessary.

“Our country is going through a long-overdue awakening to the injustices of Black families in this country,” he said. “The diversity of this quadrant is what I love the most.”

Kaiser first purchased the property and began developing ideas for it before the Great Recession. The economic collapse halted those plans. The recovery led to Carbon 12. The property was vacant at the time of purchase.

“We haven’t displaced anything,” he said. “We haven’t torn down homes; we haven’t torn down businesses. That’s not to say Williams (Avenue)-Vancouver (Avenue) doesn’t have a horrible history of gentrification.”

Kaiser said he supports debt forgiveness for Black Americans.

“What our country needs now more than ever is open discourse to alleviate this massive disparity,” he said.

Kaiser Group is not done with the area, either. The developer owns an adjacent parcel east of The Canyons. The property is approximately 6,000 square feet and zoned for residential use.

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Ben Waechter, principal architect of Waechter Architecture, has long been attracted to cross-laminated timber. Soon it will dominate his firm’s new headquarters in North Portland.

The new three-story, mixed-use building will feature CLT throughout – not only as floors and stairs, but even as shear walls.

“The one thing that we wanted to do with this was to build a CLT or mass-timber building completely out of the material,” Waechter said. “This will be the first 100 percent CLT project in Oregon to use structural wall panels using prescriptive code.”

Ground was broken recently on the 10,000-square-foot building at 4224 N. Mississippi Ave., in a trendy commercial area surrounded by shops, a Prost! pub and a food-cart pod. Waechter Architecture, a 12-architect practice, will occupy the bottom two floors. Waechter himself will live in a third-floor residence (he currently lives above the firm’s leased office on North Williams Avenue).

The project has been more than a decade in planning. Waechter’s family has owned the vacant property for years.

“We’ve been thinking about this project for a long time,” he said. “The land has been sitting there.”

KPFF is lending structural expertise to the project. Anne Monnier, a KPFF principal, said she has worked on several CLT projects, but never one with mass-timber shear walls.

“That’s exciting about this project,” she said. “It brings the CLT conversation to the next level.”

The most challenging aspect is tying the CLT structure into the foundation, Waechter said. “That’s technically and aesthetically a challenge,” he said. “In a seismic event, it transfers enormous forces to the foundation.”

The project has attracted close attention from regulators as the first building to submit to the city’s prescriptive code for CLT structures. The Bureau of Development Services at one point requested further structural analysis.

“We always look at what’s the weakest link in the building,” Monnier said.

BDS officials wanted assurance that the joints would not pop, leading to a structural failure in a strong earthquake.

Iain Macdonald, executive director of the TallWood Design Institute – a collaboration between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon – said the prescriptive process offers a “speedier pathway” to local approval.

“The more that can fall within the prescriptive process, the better,” he said.

Waechter considered a range of materials for the building. He looked into structural brick, insulated concrete mixtures and autoclave concrete blocks. But Portland’s status as a showcase for CLT technology in the United States proved attractive.

“In the last couple of years, mass-timber knowledge being developed in the Northwest, it seemed like potentially the best solution,” he said.

Waechter opted to rely on KLH Massivholz GmbH, an Austrian manufacturer, to supply the CLT for the $3 million project.

“KLH was able to provide the highest level of quality for the lowest price,” he said.

Architecturally, part of the challenge was determining how to avoid covering the CLT.

“What we aspire to is designing buildings that have strong clarity and are fully integrated where material and space and mechanical systems are interwoven and become one office,” Waechter said.

The building will use hydronic heating and cooling – tubes filled with water that run in a 4-inch concrete slab on the ground. For additional cooling, fan coils will blow water-cooled air.

“We’re not using any refrigerants at all,” Waechter said.

The building will also be fully electric (no natural gas). No environmental certifications are being pursued for the project.

Tall windows will grace the front of the building in a simple grid. There will be no front door: Visitors will enter a passageway from North Mississippi Avenue that will lead to an outdoor courtyard surrounded on three sides by the U-shaped building, and on the south side by the cast concrete wall of the neighboring building, Mississippi Lofts.

From there, visitors will be able to enter ground-floor offices and workshops.

The building is designed for maximum flexibility. CLT buildings can be difficult to retrofit, so Waechter sought to make a future retrofit unnecessary. Each floor will be roughed in so that it can function as an office space or apartment. Demising walls could be installed without the need to redo sprinklers and electrical systems. Kitchens could be added.

“In the future, the bottom floor could become retail, the second floor could become office and the third floor could be residential,” Waechter said. “It could be all apartments. Technically, it’s been a little bit of a puzzle, but we’ve achieved it.”

Waechter said the building is designed to accommodate changing economic realities.

“All of the infrastructure is there for these different programs to plug and play,” he said. “So in that way we’re future-proofing it.”

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International Mass Timber Conference officials have bowed to the inevitable, canceling the 2020 event and planning another for next year.

The 2021 conference will take place March 30-April 1 at the Oregon Convention Center, organizers announced Monday.

This year’s conference was supposed to be headlined by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. He’s engaged in designing Key Development‘s Block 25 project in Old Town Chinatown.

Organizers had previously held out hope the conference could be held later this year after it was postponed from its initial dates of March 23-26. As with other large events, organizers came to recognize an international conference would be ill-considered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The vast majority of 2020 exhibitors and sponsors are enthusiastically rolling their exhibit spaces and sponsorships into next year’s conference, adding significant momentum to the pent-up excitement we’re seeing for our usual, in-person mass timber gathering,” organizers stated.

The Forest Business Network, which produces the conference with WoodWorks, pledged to make refunds available as soon as possible. Software difficulties have delayed the process, the organizers informed registrants by email.

The conference annually brings in hundreds of architects, developers, wood-products experts and others to Portland, capitalizing on the city’s status as one eager to embrace mass-timber construction.

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The city of Gladstone is preparing to welcome one new building, with two distinct uses.

General contractor P&C Construction is wrapping up work on the Gladstone Civic Center, which will house both the police department and city hall. Punch list items are being tackled, and substantial completion is expected later this month.

Scott | Edwards Architecture designed the building. Ground was broken in April 2019.

“We really worked closely with the chief of police and the city administrator early on to develop how this site shook out, so to speak,” said Jennifer Marsicek, a senior associate with Scott | Edwards Architecture. “It actually works pretty well to have the police side separate from city hall because of the seismic and the resiliency measures the police side requires that the city hall side doesn’t require. And joining it with a mass-timber lobby really made sense overall.”

The single-story building has slightly fewer than 20,900 square feet – around 13,000 square feet on the law enforcement side. That part of the building is built to Category 4 seismic resilience, while the city hall portion is built to Category 2 resilience. This is in part because the police headquarters also will serve as a city emergency operations center.

The city hall side will house administration, planning and other key departments, as well as a city council chambers that will be able to serve as a municipal court.

The two sides are joined by a gently tapered corridor topped with exposed cross-laminated timber panels and glulam columns and beams. Historic photos of Gladstone adorn the corridor walls next to public-facing department entrances.

“With the separation we were basically able to build two separate buildings and do the infill with CLT,” said Will Somme, project manager for P&C Construction.

The two-acre site sits next to the city’s public works facilities and across the street from Gladstone High School. The new complex also will provide additional off-street parking.

Unlike Oregon City’s Robert Libke Public Safety Building, which features CLT wall and ceiling panels, the Gladstone Civic Center has only CLT ceiling panels.

“This is concrete tilt on both sides and you have a wood diaphragm group, whereas out there it’s all CLT and you have all the extra bracing,” Somme said. “You don’t have to go to that extent when you have a concrete tilt structure.”

The Gladstone building’s police side has a backup power generator and water, as well as gas service separate from the civic side.

“The diaphragm still was a lot of work, specifically on this side, where you saw there’s a break where it goes from a Category 2 to a Category 4 building,” Somme said. “There’s a full seismic joint that runs through the interior of the lobby, so you have that flexibility there.”

Combining practical police needs with more aesthetic civic ones can be a challenge for designers, and Marsicek worked with Lango Hansen Landscape Architects to provide the city with a warm public space filled with plants. Glulam beams even extend outside the building and provide support for planters that will eventually sport fresh vines.

“It was their concept,” Marsicek said. “And with an overall site design that drains into a central swale it made sense to bring that into the building.”

The project was one of the first in Oregon to come together via progressive design-build delivery. In this method the owner retains a design firm and a construction firm early on for joint work on planning, design and construction – with agreement on price and schedule. The method can shorten project schedules, including procurement, and create a single point of responsibility for owners.

“It was a new experience for us,” Marsicek said. “It was really a team effort from the beginning with P&C, the owner and us.”

The method made sense for this particular project, Somme said.

“Contracted police buildings are unusual, and that’s why you typically see a different delivery method based on qualifications,” he said. “Because you just don’t want a contractor to come in, and nothing against them, but to not have that experience, because of what goes into these buildings, it usually doesn’t work.”

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Cities, counties and public agencies in the Pacific Northwest are jumping on the mass-timber bandwagon. The city of Hillsboro, for example, has hired Swinerton to construct the Hidden Creek Community Center. The two-story, 51,500-square-foot facility will feature a mix of structural elements that include glulam beams and cross-laminated timber panels as well as concrete tilt-up panels and shear walls.

The $37 million building, designed by Opsis Architecture, is expected to serve as an example of how mass timber can be integrated into public works. Meanwhile, Washington County and the cities of Milwaukie, Hillsboro, Oregon City, Lincoln City and others are pursuing mass-timber projects.

“We now have more and more public entities in multiple states that we’re in plans for,” said Tym, a superintendent with Swinerton’s mass timber subsidiary who goes by a single name. “The success of our private partnerships showed us there’s a big learning curve, but we’re turning that into something that is predictable and cost-effective.”

The in Hillsboro also was constructed by Swinerton. That five-story, 156,000-square-foot structure was designed by Hacker and completed in 2018. Swinerton still regularly fields inquiries about how the project came together, Tym said.

“That was my first interaction with mass timber and CLT,” he said. “And those partnerships have really driven the idea of a sustainable, really aesthetically pleasing product into the mainstream of public works projects.”

The Hidden Creek Community Center is becoming one. It will feature a two-court gymnasium, with 90-foot-long glulam beams supporting CLT ceiling panels.

The building also will hold cardio and weight rooms, two exercise or dance rooms, community meeting rooms and more – all inside an open shell comprised largely of wood. The facility is being built on 20 acres of city-owned land across the street from 53rd Avenue Community Park.

Swinerton’s general contracting team has worked with its mass timber division as well as concrete and carpentry self-perform units. KPFF Consulting Engineers performed structural engineering. Calvert Co. of Southwest Washington fabricated the beams and columns, with one exception: The glulam beams used in the gymnasium were fabricated in Drain by American Laminators.

Finally, Austrian firm KLH Massivholz GmbH manufactured the five-ply cross-laminated timber panels used in the building’s ceilings and roof.

“Mass timber is really hot right now,” Swinerton project manager Greg Byrnes said. “Schedule-wise, the local (fabricators) are all filled up.”

One of the biggest challenges for the construction team, Byrnes said, was connecting the gym’s concrete walls with its massive long-span roof beams, as well as sealing the building envelope around them. Each glulam beam weighs 13,700 pounds. A NessCampbell Crane + Rigging crew flew them in.

“The insulation layer on the tilts connected with carbon fiber pins, and to stitch the whole thing together – those were a challenge,” Tym said. “I’ve never done the large beams and the clear story on top of it with compounding sloping elements (33 inches) on top of that. It has tapered column lines, and making sure everything was sound while we put it together was phenomenal.”

For Swinerton Mass Timber, each project presents something new.

“It’s evolving every day,” Tym said. “I have weekly, daily meetings about how the timber is going to interface with other mediums, how we’re making these connections and still sustaining the viability and technical ratings we require for these building types.

“We’re learning more and more that six, eight months out we have a heavy-loaded front end because of the planning and design work, but also for procurement and fabrication. All that work that comes on the front end is then dependent on having a good logistics and erection plan from the craft superintendent side.”

The connections and fasteners for each material are different and the plans are different, even down to the moisture barrier around those connections, Tym added.

“Every element we’re able to work with comes with new challenges,” he said. “But with the challenges we’re able to archive and make predictable these things for future projects.”

Because Swinerton operates nationally, it has a good handle on regional market trends. And those trends suggest mass timber is steadily rising in popularity.

“The market is absolutely exploding in California,” Tym said. “We are putting these projects up all over the country, but because this is an emerging market there are still constraints on who can provide, manufacture and deliver. Those supply chains are a critical element in deciding factors during pre-con.”

But as the market matures, he continued, companies are branching out into more specialized aspects of mass-timber construction.

“People might see it as niche right now, but what we’re seeing is that it’s going to be much more commonplace,” he said, driven in part by public-private partnerships like the one used for the Hidden Creek Community Center.

“If there’s a desire and growth in the market, new businesses are going to spawn from it,” Tym said. “The whole world is trying to go tall wood. We want high-rises and we want big stuff. There’s a lot of math by engineers to make these things behave properly, but we have great aspirations to make this mainstream enough and utilize these efficiencies so we can continue to grow bigger and make things look really beautiful.”

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