Noel Johnson saw potential in a grass-strewn tract in Northwest Portland that was visible from the window of the first home he bought in Portland.

“I’ve been staring at this property since 2004,” he said during a tour of the Wilson Street tract.

Now, Wilson Forest Park Townhomes is under construction with 14 townhomes. They range from four bedrooms and approximately 2,100 square feet to five bedrooms and 3,400 square feet. Located along Northwest Wilson Street between Northwest 29^th and 30^th avenues, the townhomes are built for flexibility, with a first-floor unit that can be rented out as an apartment or used as an office or bedroom.

Johnson and local architect Richard Potestio landed on an unusual building typology: They are not traditional detached, single-family homes, but it’s also not a multifamily condo or apartment project.

“We’re trying to create an answer to the question of how can a family live in (the) Northwest neighborhood, both functionally and economically,” Johnson said.

The three- and four-story homes have walk-ups to Wilson Street. The garages will have electric vehicle chargers installed in each home, an amenity that required Portland General Electric to beef up decades-old electric infrastructure in the neighborhood.

The townhomes are made from cross-laminated timber. Johnson used Oregon supplier D.R. Johnson in Riddle, and much of the material was salvaged from wildfires, he said. On Wednesday, contractor Carpentry Plus Inc. flew in mass timber pieces using a crane.

CPI had to buy the timber at the height of soaring prices. Johnson signed a change order that cost an additional $111,000. “It is what it is,” he said.

Each townhome is separated by a mere 4-1/4 inches from the neighboring townhome’s exterior wall. There’s a reason for that.

“If we connect, then it’s a condo,” Johnson said. “Who wants to be in a condo?” The townhomes are for homeownership, and no condo or homeowners association is involved.

The ground-floor units take advantage of the growing popularity of accessory apartments, both for homeowners looking for an extra revenue stream and renters seeking urban living space in Portland’s tight market.

Johnson calls them ADUs (accessory dwelling units), but they’re within the main structure of the townhome, rather than a detached small building. The ground-floor units average about 700 square feet.

The ground-floor units have separate entrances and mailing addresses, making them ideal for people who want to offset their mortgage payment with rental revenue. “The home hopefully has the flexibility to grow and move and groove over decades, not just a couple years,” Johnson said.

It also has advantages for Portland’s increasingly mobile workforce. Johnson gave the example of a Nike employee being sent abroad for a few years. “In which case, then you can rent out the main home, you can keep the ADU so you have a mailing address and a place to land when you’re working as an expat, and you can come home,” he said.

A group of four other local investors, all of whom live in Northwest Portland, are backing the Wilson Forest Park Townhomes. (The project is so named because it’s a sneaker’s throw from Forest Park’s Lower Macleay trailhead). Johnson’s co-managing partner is Scott Tillman, with whom he previously took part in the acquisition of ESCO Corp.’s Northwest Portland property. First Republic Bank is the project’s lender.

The investors endured a lengthy journey through the city’s permitting process. An extensive land-use review was required because the lot was being subdivided into 14 parcels. Further reviews by the Portland Bureau of Transportation and public works bureaus followed, and then reviews for ground work and finally the building permit.

The developers lost a battle seeking an exception to a city rule limiting building frontages to 100 feet or less.

“In total it was 3-1/2 years of simply waiting on city review,” Johnson said. Combined with development and construction time, the project will be a half-decade from inception to completion.

“It’s going to take five years to build 14 homes in the city of Portland on a site that was a perfect, ready-to-go site with no complications,” Johnson said. “That is why we have almost no supply of new housing, especially for families, in the city of Portland. We’ve built our system to fundamentally prevent it.”

The city’s Bureau of Development Services has come under fire for lengthy permit delays that were exacerbated by the pandemic. BDS spokesman Ken Ray said the city is working to improve.

“We understand concerns about the timeliness of the permitting process,” Ray stated in an email. “All seven permitting bureaus are engaged in the work of the Permitting Improvement Task Force, appointed by Commissioner Dan Ryan, to reduce building permit times by one-third.”

I & E Construction is the general contractor. Johnson hired the company after hearing about their work from contacts at Walsh Construction.

The project is set for completion in April 2022. Sean Z. Becker Real Estate is .

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Mass-timber production, barely more than a decade old in North America, is encountering some growing pains.

Wait times stretch months for new material such as cross-laminated timber panels, leaving construction schedules on hold.

At the same time, new factories are coming online – some branched off from small sawmills and others backed by deep-pocketed international equity – and major timber companies are showing serious interest in becoming�� players in the mass-timber market.

“Projects have been struggling to get supply and lead times of a year have not been uncommon,” said Iain Macdonald, executive director of the TallWood Design Institute, a collaboration of Oregon State University‘s College of Forestry and the University of Oregon‘s School of Architecture and Environment.

Demand is not the problem. Google’s Sidewalk Labs has announced a sprawling mass-timber project in Toronto that would have 34,000 housing units in buildings with up to 30 stories made from CLT and glulam beams. The buildings would be the tallest mass-timber structures to date in North America.

Other mass-timber projects under way include: a new headquarters building for Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas; a 17-story, 137-unit residential tower in Vancouver, British Columbia; and a 300,000-square-foot, six-story speculative office building in San Francisco designed by Portland’s Hacker.

Mass timber‘s supply chain is not like those of concrete, steel and traditional timber framing. Mass timber must be made to order and cut to certain dimensions. It must be processed to include channels cut to fit adjacent panels or beams, and in some cases, holes to accept hardware. It must be made to fit into the building being designed.

“If you want mass timber to work as a concept and to be economically viable, you need to involve suppliers early in the project,” Macdonald said.

There’s no off-the-shelf way to buy mass timber. That means developers, architects and their contractors typically engage a mass-timber supplier long before construction begins in an integrated project delivery method.

“It is very much a project-based industry,” said Hardy Wentzel, CEO of Penticton, British Columbia-based Structurlam – the largest mass-timber manufacturer in North America. “It’s not like a mass production of lumber or plywood where you make standard sizes. That’s just not the case here, but it’s not the case in Europe either.”

Long lead times also make it difficult for project teams to switch suppliers. If a manufacturer falls behind, project teams have few alternatives.

The supply shortage is having consequences on the groud for mass-timber projects.

“Most of the West Coast suppliers are really starting to be maxed out,” said Stefee Knudsen, a Hacker principal who is leading design of the Pier 70 office building in San Francisco. “This project is actually too big for most of the suppliers.”

Opportunistic European manufacturers are looking to fill the gap, scooping up North American market share where they can.

“The European supply chain is able to compete on the West Coast,” Knudsen said. “It’s looking like it could be a European supply of the mass timber (for Pier 70). It actually costs about the same to put it on a ship through the Panama Canal as it does to put it on a truck down the West Coast.”

Knudsen said she would prefer to use a local manufacturer if capacity were not an issue.

“We just need the supply to catch up with the demand,” she said. “It is hard to be an Oregonian and to think our project could be supplied by a European (manufacturer). One thing I hope happens is some more come online in the Pacific Northwest because I really support our rural communities here.”

ZGF Architects is designing mass-timber projects in Portland and Texas.

“Supply continues to be an issue, but we’re working through it,” Kristina Thomsen, a ZGF principal, said at a 91��Ƶ Builder Breakfast event in December.

More supply is coming. Locally, Swinerton Builders is investing in its own glulam fabrication capability, Macdonald said.

“That’s showing they’re seeing a bottleneck in certain aspects of the supply chain,” he said, referring to Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines that perform detailing work on CLT panels.

Swinerton officials could not be reached for comment.

A major timber company is considering construction of a mass-timber manufacturing facility in southern Oregon, said Macdonald, who said he could not divulge details because of a nondisclosure agreement.

“Major timber players are poised to jump into the mass-timber sphere,” he said. “The major timber companies for years have been kicking tires and looking at when is the right time to jump in. They have considerable capital, and as that happens, you’ll see some economies of scale.”

Mass timber has attracted vocal boosters for its lower carbon footprint in comparison to concrete, ability to withstand earthquakes and fire, faster construction timelines, and its warm look and ability to integrate into sleek, modern designs.

Other mass-timber plants are planned or beginning to operate.

Structurlam and Walmart have announced the manufacturer will open a facility in Conway, Arkansas, a suburb of Little Rock, to supply 1.1 million cubic feet of mass timber for the retailer’s headquarters. The facility will be housed, in a twist of irony, in a retooled former steel fastener plant that had been shuttered.

Katerra is another emerging player that could provide significant new supply. The company opened a 270,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Spokane Valley, Washington, in September. Katerra is backed by SoftBank, the same investor with large stakes in Uber and WeWork, and has raised eyebrows by closing a factory in Phoenix last year and laying off employees amid reports of unfinished projects. Still, the company has announced plans for manufacturing facilities in California and Texas.

Another, smaller entrant into the market is Vaagen Timbers of Colville, Washington. The company was started by members of the same family that operates Vaagen Brothers Lumber, a local mill company that dates to the early 1950s.

Vaagen Timbers was certified for construction in July, and is now providing CLT material for everything from a small ski lodge in Idaho to a Lutheran church in Minnesota.

“We’re at about 30 to 35 percent of our production capacity currently,” said Russ Vaagen, founder and chief executive of the firm. “But that’s not what we see for our market in general. Not all the architects have us in their sights as far as supply.”

There’s also some consolidation occurring: SmartLam, based in Montana, bought an operation in Dothan, Alabama, that was started by International Beams.

In Oregon, D.R. Johnson has been hailed by politicians as a new answer to the state’s longtime battles between the timber industry and environmentalists, and a bridge across the rural-urban divide. The Riddle manufacturer has by all accounts bounced back strongly after one of its CLT panels in March 2018 at the Peavy Hall project site at Oregon State University.

Following that incident, investigations indicated the material failed because standard procedures weren’t followed, Macdonald said.

“They heated up the wood too much,” he said. “When the adhesive was applied, it was dried before it was bonded.”

D.R. Johnson has since invested in climate control at its Riddle facility, instituted further quality control checks and made personnel changes, Macdonald said.

“They seem to have moved forward really well from that,” he said. “There was so much demand and so little supply that they were able to continue without a hitch.”

One of the first project teams to use D.R. Johnson’s CLT products after the incident was Urban Development + Partners and Beam Development for District Office in Portland’s Central Eastside.

The incident may have temporarily made it easier to get CLT material, said Eric Cress, principal at UD+P.

“We had no problem,” he said.

D.R. Johnson is in the preliminary stages of considering an expansion at its property in Riddle, President Valerie Johnson said.

“We have quite a bit of vacant property here at our plant,” she said. “I would say, yes, that we are looking at that.”

Industry officials said the Riddle manufacturer is rumored to be booked up with supplying the Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto. Johnson declined to comment on the project.

“The Google project is the worst-kept secret in the industry,” Macdonald said.

The forest-products industry is continuing to innovate to meet demand, Johnson said.

“We’re excited about growth,” she said. “It’s frustrating to not be able to feed more of it, and we certainly don’t want the market to get frustrated waiting for material. …��I think everybody’s trying to gear up.”

As the industry matures, some manufacturers are seeking the next step.

Vaagen Timbers has made a bet on 4-foot-wide CLT panels that can be manufactured up to 60 feet long. They are ideal for uses such as elevator shafts, Russ Vaagen said.

In Europe, a popular size is 1,250 millimeters – slightly wider than 4 feet, Vaagen said. He believes the CLT industry will move toward a standard size.

“I do think there are going to be stock panels – and I think they’re going to be the 4-foot panels, and that isn’t because it’s what we produce,” he said.

Structurlam’s Wentzel, however, was skeptical that the industry would make such a move.

“We just don’t see a standardized offering,” he said. “There is no such thing as a standard building. Somebody in the supply chain is going to have to manipulate that standardized piece to fit the building.”

Structurlam does not keep inventory of manufactured panels. That would introduce additional costs into the supply chain and make mass timber less competitive, Wentzel said.

Wentzel said manufacturers are not alone to blame for supply issues, pointing to a lack of building professionals who are experienced in mass timber.

“Not everybody knows how to design and build the material yet,” he said.

Mass timber has proved to be a use for the small-diameter lumber that is readily available. Old-growth timber is not needed to manufacture the pressed panels and beams.

Macdonald said he sees an opening for CLT manufacturers to use reclaimed lumber. Wood material that is now wasted could be diverted from the landfill, he said.

“We’ve looked at processing those kinds of fibers from panels, and technically it’s absolutely viable,” he said. “There’s no performance deficit. The issue is there’s no supply chain there, so it’s not economically viable at the moment.”

In Portland, a cottage industry has sprung up of architects, developers and builders who specialize in mass timber. Some of the first mass-timber projects in the U.S. were built in Portland.

“Oregon has really been leading the charge, I would say, in the U.S.,” Wentzel said. “It’s a very good market for us.”

As the industry matures, it’s increasingly apparent there will be plenty of competition.

“The market is an unforgiving judge, so you have to be competitive, you have to provide quality, you have to be timely, you have to provide service,” Wentzel said.

As for supply, he added, the industry is growing quickly.

“It is nascent, but the market will find a way, and it is finding a way,” Wentzel said.

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When it came to reimagining and expanding The Nature Conservancy‘s Oregon headquarters in Southeast Portland, it was important for the project to reflect the environmental organization’s values.

So a pavilion expansion was built with Northern California cross-laminated timber and glulam beams certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and manufactured by D.R. Johnson of Riddle.

Juniper wood cladding and cedar decks came from conservation areas. “We worked closely with the folks that were harvesting it,” said Thomas Robinson, LEVER Architecture‘s founding principal.

The Nature Conservancy considered ground-up construction before opting to expand the existing three-story, 12,462-square-foot building with a 2,000-square-foot pavilion. The original building at��821 S.E. 14th Ave. was constructed in 1979.

“At a really basic level, one of the most sustainable things you can do is re-use something,” Robinson said.

Now called the Oregon Conservation Center, the project was recently completed. The project team expects the building will achieve a LEED gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The pavilion will provide space for board meetings, as well as conferences and events with allied organizations.

“They’re looking to solve major, long-term issues that impact Oregon, and this space is designed around allowing those types of conversations to happen,” Robinson said.

A second-floor terrace provides visual connection to the Buckman neighborhood. A rooftop photovoltaic system was installed, which will supply about a quarter of the building’s energy needs.

Project^ was the development manager, and Lease Crutcher Lewis served as general contractor. The project team also included��KPFF Consulting Engineers,��PAE Consulting Engineers, and��Lando and Associates��Landscape Architecture.

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Andersen Construction has long been busy at the Burnside Bridge‘s east end. It built Key Development‘s Yard and then Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell. Now the contractor is tackling Block 76 West – formerly known as SideYard – at 365 N.E. Couch St.

The five-story mixed-use building, designed by Skylab Architecture, will have 23,569 square feet. It will feature cross-laminated timber flooring, glulam structural beams and wooden columns. Two concrete cores holding staircases will be built with mass-plywood panels.

“It’s all exposed beams and columns,” said Ådne Tonning, senior project manager with general contractor Andersen Construction.

The project is Key Development’s first to feature CLT, according to the firm’s chief operating officer, Claudia Munk-von Flotow. Riddle-based D.R. Johnson is supplying the CLT.

Ground was broken on Block 76 West in May 2018 after several delays. Use of wood has made a significant difference in construction, Tonning said.

“It was faster,” he said. “We started with the footings and then the retaining wall. And then for the installation was basically they shipped up the wood and we just popped them in.”

Columns and beams are connected with Knapp hardware, while the glulam beams and columns are bolted together.

“It was just like Legos filling it up,” Tonning said.

The time savings amounts to several months, he added.

The roof is in place and almost all the brick cladding has been installed. Glaziers are busy installing a complex curtain wall system designed to flood the interior of the building with natural light. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors are working their way through the building.

“Right now the roof is done and the brickies just finished except for those two little spring walls,” Tonning said. “Culver Glass is installing frames, glazing and punched openings, and we had to wait until the brickies were done until we could do the canopy work; it’s a very tight site.”

The project team is shooting for a temporary certificate of occupancy by May.

Office users are being sought for the top floors, with Key Development in talks with the owners of Hood River’s Ferment Brewing Co. and Camp 1805 Distillery to open tasting rooms on the lower floors.

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For developers keen to use cross-laminated timber, the failure in March of CLT panels at a project on Oregon State University‘s campus has been met with a widespread shrug.

CLT is being used for a number of Portland-area projects, some with material from D.R. Johnson, the Southern Oregon supplier at the heart of the OSU incident.

For its proponents, CLT offers an attractive combination of warm aesthetics, a buy-local economic story and shorter construction schedules. Developers who are using the products say they are satisfied D.R. Johnson has fixed the issues that caused the material to reportedly delaminate at Peavy Hall in Corvallis.

Key Development‘s Block 76 West project, near the Burnside Bridge‘s east end, is using CLT materials from D.R. Johnson.

“We did not have any reluctance to go with D.R. Johnson,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operating officer of Key Development. “They’ve been great to work with.”

The Block 76 West project, formerly known as SideYard, will have 23,569 square feet of space over five floors. Office users are being sought for the top floors, Flotow said. Key Development is in talks with the owners of Hood River’s Ferment Brewing Co. and Camp 1805 Distillery to open tasting rooms in the building.

Andersen Construction is building the project based on a design from Skylab Architecture.

District Office, a Central Eastside Industrial District project from Beam Development and Urban Development + Partners, will also use CLT from D.R. Johnson.

“It’s a positive connection between the urban economy and rural economy here in Oregon, and aesthetically, it’s more compelling,” said Jonathan Malsin, a principal at Beam Development.

Hacker, which designed District Office, will itself occupy 20,000 square feet in the six-floor, 110,000-square-foot building. Andersen Construction is building the project.

Beam Development was already interested in CLT, Malsin said, before a suggestion was made that it be used for District Office.

“We’ve been keen on using CLT for a while now,” he said. “When we started planning the project with Hacker (officials), they proposed it.”

The OSU incident did not dissuade the District Office project team from using D.R. Johnson’s CLT.

“We did our due diligence,” Malsin said. “We remain thrilled to be working with them and are confident in their ability to deliver.”

Brandon Brown, a Portland developer, also did not hesitate to use CLT materials on the Flatiron building. Construction of the six-floor, approximately 25,000-square-foot office project is wrapping up, with completion expected by Nov. 1.

CLT was more appropriate for the building, with its envelope reaching the triangular lot’s boundaries, Brown said.

“The wood performs in a much better way than concrete for that specific design,” he said.

Brown also favored the aesthetics of CLT.

“Part of the driver was just the warmth the wood brings to the feel of the buildings,” he said. “That’s something that concrete just doesn’t allow for.”

Works Progress Architecture��designed the Flatiron building; Abbott Construction��is serving as general contractor.

D.R. Johnson, based in Riddle, offers regional ties and a feel-good story for local projects looking to support Oregon’s timber industry. But the company does have competitors, such as Structurlam of British Columbia, in addition to traditional concrete-and-steel construction. Structurlam provided CLT to First Tech Federal Credit Union‘s newly opened 156,000-square-foot office building in Hillsboro.

D.R. Johnson did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Not every CLT proposal has moved forward. Most notably, Framework from Portland’s Project^ was halted in July after the 12-story proposal attracted a range of grants and months of publicity. Project^ blamed escalating construction costs, fluctuating tax-credit markets and inflation.

In August, Oregon issued new building codes for CLT structures. Known as the Statewide Alternative Method, the codes are drawn from the 2021 International Building Code and allow for tall wood construction.

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Key Development‘s follow-up to Yard will have little in common with the controversial Burnside bridgehead tower.

Instead of an imposing building envelope and black exterior panels, Yard‘s sibling will be much smaller and feature warm, reddish-brown bricks.

“We’re trying to make it more of a classic Central Eastside building than a striking, contemporary project, which we’ve kind of already done with Yard,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operating officer of Key Development, the developer of Yard and the new project on Block 76 West. “It’s really not the little sister to Yard as we once concepted it to be.”

The mixed-use project was known in planning as SideYard – a play on it being a smaller neighbor to the 21-story project built first. Now that Yard has sold to an institutional buyer – the largely residential building was snapped up by a Thailand-based investor for $126.68 million in December 2016 – the SideYard name no longer made sense, Flotow said.

The Block 76 West building will rise to five stories and include 23,569 square feet. It’s being designed by Skylab Architecture, which also designed Yard. Andersen Construction, which previously built Yard and Guerrilla Development‘s Fair-Haired Dumbbell nearby, recently broke ground on the new project.

The program for Key’s building at 365 N.E. Couch St. hasn’t been finalized, but it’s likely to be two floors of retail space and three floors of office space, Flotow said. The retail spaces will likely face Northeast Couch Street and Third Avenue.

No vehicle parking will be provided. However, the development will include bicycle-friendly features such as “rolling curbs.”

Key Development, based in Hood River, has a lead on a potential ground-floor tenant: Ferment, a brewery that is opening a production facility and small taproom in Hood River. The company may be interested in a Portland location, Flotow said. Ferment is led by Dan Peterson, a former head brewer at Hood River brewery pFriem.

Block 76 West’s structure will set it apart: Key opted to use cross-laminated timber. The structure will be a CLT diaphragm with brick cladding. The CLT materials will be provided by D.R. Johnson, a timber manufacturer based in Riddle.

“We have done lots of conventionally framed, heavy-timber buildings,” Flotow said. “We’ve never done a CLT project. For us it’s both an aesthetic thing and time efficiency, especially with such a heavy building push and a labor market that’s not super available to do heavy-timber construction projects.”

Using CLT materials with precut holes and connections accelerates the building schedule, Flotow said.

“It makes for a really efficient construction process,” Flotow said. “You can just fly your structure a lot quicker.”

Flotow said she is not concerned by the recent delamination of CLT subflooring during construction of a building at Oregon State University in Corvallis. CLT is a proven technology with an established safety record in Europe and Canada, she said.

“There’s piles of literature of test results from both a structural and a fire-protection point of view that is giving us some confidence,” she said. “I don’t think we’re putting ourselves at a huge risk by going for a CLT diaphragm.”

Andersen Construction even sent a manager to Germany to learn about CLT, Flotow said. Andersen’s experience building in the cramped Burnside bridgehead area factored into its selection as general contractor, she said.

“They have efficient ways of staging and scheduling to stay on schedule and on budget,” she said.

The building is on track to open in spring 2019.

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A section of subflooring failed last week during construction of the $79.5 million new Peavy Hall at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

A 4-foot-by-20-foot cross-laminated timber (CLT) panel, made up of five layers of 2-by-6 Douglas fir boards glued together in a crisscross pattern, delaminated at one end and fell from the third floor to the second on March 14, according to Steve Clark, OSU vice president of university relations and marketing. No one was injured, he said.

“There was no one in the work area at that time,” he said.

The CLT panel that fell was manufactured by D.R. Johnson Lumber Co. of Riddle, the Corvallis Gazette-Times reported. Representatives of D.R. Johnson declined Wednesday to comment on the incident, referring all queries to OSU officials.

Construction at the site involving CLT installation has been suspended by general contractor Andersen Construction, Clark said, but other work on the building is continuing while an investigation into the collapse is carried out.

“That’s what we understand (happened),” Clark said, referring to delamination. “We have a third-party engineering firm evaluating what happened and what caused the failure. And we’re hoping that the investigation by the third-party firm will be completed next week.”

The damaged panel, which was prefabricated off-site, was replaced within 36 hours of the initial collapse, Clark added.

“All the (CLT) panels in the building were braced with shoring, which is a standard practice with concrete and steel, but in this case we did it as a safety precaution,” he said. “In construction, even using conventional methods, from time to time there are issues. And contractors, engineers and designers, they identify solutions and implement that solution. We’re identifying the cause of the failure and we’re identifying any other components that may be compromised.”

The three-story Peavy Hall is replacing the original Peavy Hall on the same site. It is intended to become the centerpiece of the College of Forestry and a demonstration of contemporary timber-based building techniques.

The new hall is also being built using a so-called “rocking wall” intended to dampen seismic vibrations and render the structure able to withstand an earthquake and protect its occupants.

Clark said it is too early to know how much it will cost to repair the damage. When asked whether OSU officials have any reservations about further use of CLT in the building, he responded, “We have none whatsoever.

“We’re committed to CLT and we believe it’s been demonstrated across Europe and Canada as a safe construction method,” he said. “Actually, this university has helped bring CLT to testing and documentation and been a champion of it, so we’re completely in support of it.”

For mass-timber buildings, solid wood panels are used to frame walls and floors, including the roof. CLT is meant to replace concrete for those uses, thereby saving weight and cost. The construction method only recently has begun to gain acceptance in the United States.

Many industry professionals asked Wednesday about the incident were hesitant to offer any insight into the panel collapse. Several said it was too early to speculate and there are too many variables to sort through to identify a cause. One representative of a manufacturer of CLT products lamented the incident could be “disastrous” for the fledgling mass-timber industry, while others in the industry shied away from the topic altogether.

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Supporters of cross-laminated timber are pondering a chicken-or-the-egg problem – which will come first in the tall wood revolution: demand for CLT, or the domestic supply chain?

By now, in the Pacific Northwest and around the U.S. have reported on CLT and its sky-high potential – wooden skylines, a revitalized timber industry, healthier forests, etc.

But in Oregon and Washington, significant steps lie ahead before CLT fully takes hold. And least among them seems to be a by the steel and concrete industries.

“The single most important determinant of the on the West Coast will be: Does it save developers money?” said Greg Block, president of Sustainable Northwest.

Right now, it rarely does.

Intermediate objective

CLT is more expensive than its competitors, steel and concrete. However, labor costs can be lower for CLT projects because they can be built quicker. For CLT to take off, builders and developers, risk-averse by nature, need to be convinced that these cost savings justify adopting the emerging building product.

But there is a small and growing number of projects showcasing the new product in the Pacific Northwest. The Framework tower planned for the Pearl District will be the tallest wood-framed building in the U.S. With a large affordable housing component and ambitious design ideas, the project is intended to show off what CLT can do; the project would not likely have penciled out without the sizable federal grant it received. (Framework has received design approval and is awaiting construction permits.)

It remains to be seen what types of new construction will be CLT’s “sweet spot.” Though high-rises can be built using mass timber, some observers believe other uses of CLT would be more practical on a large scale.

Mid-rises and industrial applications are more likely, Block said.

“You may see some very tall towers, but that’s not where we’re anticipating the heavy investment is going to go,” he said. “It’s going to depend on the economies of scale for different types of buildings and the advantages and disadvantages of other competing materials. But people are going to experiment.”

Another showcase project is PATH Architecture‘s Carbon12 eight-story condo tower on North Williams Avenue. Though its team also received grant money to cover design concept costs, it was able to hustle and get the project topped out in a matter of weeks, generating considerable savings.

In North America there are two companies in the U.S. certified to manufacture CLT, and two in Canada. The first in the U.S. was D.R. Johnson, a family-owned mill based in Riddle.

At the time the Carbon12 project team was soliciting CLT suppliers, D.R. Johnson was unable to match its specifications, according to developer Ben Kaiser, who said he would have preferred to do business with an Oregon company. He got bids from European firms, before opting to go with Canadian company Structurlam.

Manufacturing demand

Rural economic development has always been a tough nut to crack. Sparsely-populated counties like Douglas and Lane don’t have many mid-rises, but officials hope that by creating a regulatory environment, they can be more inviting to businesses wishing to join the CLT supply chain.

“Timber is still one of our primary industries here in Lane County,” said Sarah Means, economic development director for Lane County. “And we see mass-timber products as a very intriguing innovation to the wood products industry … We know that we’ll each have a role to play if this moves forward, which we think it will.”

Though it’s near the Portland-metro area, is still timber country, said Rick Gruen, its economic development director. With 75 percent of its area forestland, economics and forestry are intrinsically tied together.

(One way Clackamas County has tried to attract development is by making its permitting and plan review process as stress-free for developers as possible, according to Gruen.)

Gruen and Clackamas County are big players in an alliance of economic development offices and research institutions looking at modernizing manufacturing in the Pacific Northwest – and the (PNMP) has been highly interested in the CLT supply chain.

The PNMP has identified the need for possible “intermediary facilities” to kiln-dry CLT to the building code-required level of 12 percent moisture (most lumber leaves the mill at around 18 percent).

Research by Oregon State University offers a thumbnail sketch of costs to enter the CLT market, including as an intermediary facility. If a company is already in the glulam business, gearing up for CLT would cost close to $15 million. Starting from scratch would cost around $40 million.

Lumber businesses that want to provide a CLT lumber line – by kiln-drying lumber up to 12 percent – are looking at a cost in the $4 million range.

Pool resources

Paying to build a manufacturing facility would require a lot of confidence in demand for CLT becoming sufficient to see the investment pay off. But once more domestic producers “jump in the pool,” the cost of CLT would likely drop.

“You’re unlikely to see significant demand pull without having a domestic manufactured product that’s cost-competitive,” Block said. “By the same token, once that becomes available, we’re going to see more algorithmic scaling of the adoption of CLT once this chicken-and-egg conundrum works itself out.”

Sustainable Northwest operates a for-profit subsidiary, Sustainable Northwest Wood, which sells wood from about 50 rural mills in Oregon and Washington. But some think that for CLT to “hit,” the large wood products manufacturers need to get on board. But many already have their own mass-timber products.

“We’re watching what happens with CLT with great interest,” said a spokeswoman for Roseburg Forest Products. “But right now we have no plans to enter that market.”

Both Roseburg Forest Products and Boise Cascade, another major manufacturer, already produce laminated veneer lumber (LVL), a mass-timber product that isn’t rated for as many uses as CLT. The byproducts of manufacturing LVL are more profitable than those from CLT. But amid the current mass-timber craze, the company is looking into expanding its LVL line, senior vice president John Sahlberg said.

One large mill is moving forward with a large CLT manufacturing component – Vaagan Brothers Lumber in Colville, Washington. There’s also a group in Spokane that has secured financing, Block said.

“I do think we’re highly likely to have additional manufacturing facilities online in the near future,” he said. “I’m aware of three serious and five proposed CLT manufacturers that are seeking financing.”

No big deal

The consensus is that both Oregon and Washington are providing supportive policy environments for CLT and new mass-timber building methods. Oregon’s building code is more CLT-friendly, but Washington has been more proactive with its procurement services promoting CLT, specifying the product for certain public school projects.

Washington’s 2016 budget directed $5.5 million to construction of modular classrooms for K-3 students as CLT demonstration projects.

Representatives from both states are serving on the International Code Council’s ad hoc group developing code updates for tall wood buildings for the scheduled 2018 updates. Three Washington projects are planned with CLT and may receive some state funding – the La Conner Library, the Aberdeen Gateway Center and a housing project in Spokane.

And demand-side problems still persist, according to Leda Chahim, government affairs specialist for Forterra, a sustainability-focused nonprofit in Washington state.

“For 20 years we’ve watched the decline of the timber industry in rural Oregon and Washington state,” she said. “CLT and mass timber have the potential to provide a sustainable and economically vibrant source of industry, and house our populations and put our people back to work.”

Some of the ideas to pay for it in rural areas include a federal tax incentive program called New Market Tax Credits – available only to lenders in America’s poorest communities.

The Wood Products Council’s Ethan Martin doesn’t expect CLT to “pop” until at least 2018. He said he used to hear about it every time a developer was considering using CLT or a similar product, but no more. It’s a sign the product is taking hold, he said.

“The beauty of it is that I’m hearing about it less and less,” he said. “People are more used to it. They don’t think to tell me anymore.”

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Results from two recent tests of cross-laminated timber panels, for fire resistance and flame spread, show that the mass timber product is closer to gaining recognition as an acceptable building material, proponents claim.

The tests were commissioned by D.R. Johnson, the only company in the country that is certified to sell CLT as a building product. Valerie Johnson, president of the Riddle-based company, said the tests are an important step forward for CLT.

“It’s really quite significant that our panel is of such quality that it’s flame-resistant,” she said. “It’s really a terrific omen for the process of developing mass timber for wood construction systems.”

Tests of CLT and mass timber, or engineered wood, products have taken place in Europe for decades, Johnson said, and more will follow in the U.S.

“We had to go through rigorous structure strength testing just to be certified to sell panels as structural products,” she said. “We will also go through blast testing and high-wind testing. It’s a very strong product and when used well it has a tremendous amount of promise.”

The flame spread test was conducted by QAI Laboratories’ office in Rancho Cucamonga, California, using the standard flame spread and smoke density classification tests in accordance with methods outlined by the American Society for Testing and Materials, according to a statement from D.R. Johnson. The test identified the rate of spread of fire across the material and gave it the highest rating, meaning there was “minimal spread of fire across the building material over the test’s standard time period.”

The fire resistance test was performed by the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, according to D.R. Johnson. The test evaluated the duration for which a building material will contain a fire or retain its structural integrity during a predetermined fire exposure time; the panel passed the test.

D.R. Johnson is the first CLT supplier to have a panel pass both tests in the U.S., according to David Barber, fire protection engineer and principal at engineering firm Arup in Washington, D.C.

“It’s good for them, but also very helpful for the (CLT) industry,” he said. “Some of the missing parts of the puzzle for using CLT was the lack of fire testing because most of the fire testing is carried overseas. This is part of the process where this product can be used more in the U.S. even though it’s been used extensively in other countries.”

Meanwhile, other tests of CLT are being conducted by a team led by Thomas Robinson, founding principal of Lever Architecture, thanks to a $1.5 million grant it won from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Those tests will evaluate fire, acoustical and seismic resiliency systems, and help facilitate construction of the 12-story Framework tower in the Pearl District; it is expected to become one of the country’s first modern timber high-rise buildings.

In June, Robinson explained that because current building codes don’t allow for a 12-story mass timber building, the tests will help the Framework tower meet basic code requirements.

Timm Locke, director of forest products for the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, said the recent tests are an incremental but necessary step for CLT to potentially stimulate the timber industry.

“Any new product needs to pass tests to meet safety requirements of buildings, and they passed and it’s helpful,” he said. “When architects want to use it in a building, they can point to those tests and say those are the test results for that particular product.”

Additional tests will give CLT more validity among builders, Locke said.

“Fire and safety are the most commonly cited question marks, and people in the CLT and mass timber industry are finding answers for those products.”

The use of CLT has drawn heavy criticism from the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, however. Lionel Lemay, senior vice president of sustainable development at the NRMCA, told the 91��Ƶ in May that the wood industry “does not like to cite scientific research because it doesn’t support their argument.”

Kevin Lawlor of Build With Strength, a coalition of the NRMCA, claimed that despite testing, CLT cannot match concrete for fire safety.

“I’m sure lab studies can show varying degrees of safety with different wood products, but I’d say no lab study can match the real life fire resistance of concrete products,” he said.

Lawlor added that full-scale testing and fires in completed buildings “have demonstrated that CLT does not perform very well in fires.”

But scientific testing will continue, Johnson said. Meanwhile, Oregon State University’s College of Forestry is testing inland tree species to see whether they can be used to produce CLT; currently, it’s made from Douglas fir trees.

“It’s exciting to see, as we get these positive test results, just what the potential might be,” Johnson said.

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In Oregon, cross-laminated timber is a trending topic, with its promise of sustainability, smart design and family-wage jobs. But outside the world of timber and forestry a campaign has begun to sink the emerging building product.

Last month, the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association unveiled its “Build with Strength” initiative, complete with a slick website, professionally-produced video clips and public relations staff. Representatives of the concrete industry confirm CLT has in fact cut into its market share. They say they’re tired of taking abuse, and are starting to “push back.”

The 91��Ƶ looked into this with British architect and CLT champion Andrew Waugh and structural engineer and NRMCA Senior Vice President Lionel Lemay.

Quality and craft

By the end of a half-hour interview about CLT, Waugh was “heated.”

He said he gets that way when he’s called to defend the emerging building product from detractors in the world of concrete and steel. Waugh has dedicated his career to CLT, and thinks all issues in construction should be viewed in context of climate change, so he has big problems with how products like concrete are produced.

It’s dug from an open-cast mine, generally in a developing country, which Westerners generally don’t consider, he says. And the shipping involved and the days-long heating process are far from sustainable.

“Concrete is a heinous and a poisonous product that is bad for the environment,” Waugh said. “We do need it – for roads, for foundations. We often need it for bridges, and we definitely need it for dams. But we don’t need it for buildings.”

CLT, on the other hand, is made of wood, which stores carbon.

“Our buildings weigh a fifth of what a concrete building weighs,” he said. “They take 10 percent of the deliveries to site.”

Last year, Waugh met with representatives of the Portland Business Alliance on tour in London and was inspired by their “passion, interest and vigor.” Among the contingent was Valerie Johnson, operator of the D.R. Johnson lumber mill in Riddle; she talked with him about rural economies. He heard LEVER Architecture founding principal Thomas Robinson talk about “forest to frame.”

“I thought, that’s fantastic,” Waugh said. “You know, I’m going to copy that.”

Waugh visited Portland last month to talk timber as a guest of the PBA. Fielding questions for three days can teach a person about the mood of the public, he said.

“The excitement here and the passion here for sustainability, for innovation, for quality and craft – it’s all here,” he said. “You have every single thing going for you, and you’ve got trees. You’ve got people like Valerie Johnson. You have a proactive timber industry, and that’s what you need. It really is about the individuals.”

Waugh first learned about CLT in 2003, when it was used for the Olympic Village in Turin, Italy. His firm, Waugh Thistleton, built its first CLT building three months later. Today it has 23 live projects employing the product, and a number of high-profile buildings in its portfolio, includingthe tallest timber residential building, Murray Grove, and what will be the largest CLT project in the world, Dalston Lane.

There are more than 500 CLT buildings in Europe. Due to more restrictive building codes and a lack of established production chains, there are only a handful in the U.S. (The Oregon Forest Resources Institute is aware of six to eight CLT projects under construction or complete in the U.S.) But this could quickly change.

While in Portland, Waugh met with a group of contractors at the Albina Yard project. He said builders have expressed apprehension.

“You know, it’s new,” he said. “It’s the first time in 100 years that there’s been a fundamental change in construction system. They’d be mad if they weren’t nervous.

“People in the concrete and steel industry mistakenly see this as a threat,” he continued. “They should see this as an opportunity. This is our VHS-Betamax moment. What those industries should take as a threat is climate change. What we’ve been doing as an industry, and I include architecture within the construction industry – it makes me very unpopular with architects – what we’ve done as the construction industry, in reaction to the biggest calamity that’s faced humanity since the Black Death, has been to, you know, stick some solar panels on it. Stick a windmill on it. I mean, it’s insane.”

Among the changes under CLT, costs will be arranged differently, Waugh predicts. They’ll be more transparent, for one thing, because around one-third of the construction costs will come from one source.

“You’re reducing a lot of your opaque costs,” he said. “There are fewer people on a job site, and they’re there for shorter periods. Fewer trades, and for those trades that are there, it’s a far more straightforward process.”

Though much recent media attention of CLT has focused on its potential in high-rise construction, he considers that tact wrongheaded. The fact is super-tall buildings are not efficient.

“The other problem with putting Photoshopped images of tall timber buildings in the press is that ultimately what will happen is that it will become a style, and like every other style, it will go the way of the bell bottom. And then maybe in 20 years’ time, it will come back. But it’s not the way to do it. We need to rethink, reappraise, re-evaluate and reimagine the way we construct buildings.”

‘Build with Strength’

In a guest column in the March 25 edition of the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., CalPortland CEO and NRMCA Chairman Allen Hamblen explained why his group has taken aim at CLT.

“Simply put, just because wood is abundant does not mean its use should be incentivized for construction projects like schools and multifamily housing,” Hamblen wrote. “Long story short, we fight for concrete because we know that the construction industry, even right here on timber’s home turf, is not united behind the idea of tax credits that bank economic growth on a single product, especially one as risky as CLT.”

The op-ed coincided with the rollout of the “Build with Strength” campaign, which contains an “unprecedented communications strategy,” a multi-city media tour and “rapid response capabilities,” according to a news release trumpeting the initiative’s arrival.
At the forefront of the public outreach effort is Lemay, who oversees sustainable development for the NRMCA. CLT is inferior to concrete in terms of durability, safety and cost, he says.

“The thing with the wood industry is that they don’t like to cite scientific research because it doesn’t support their argument,” he said.

Lemay cited work by the Forest Stewardship Council and Massachusetts Institute of Technology civil engineering professor Jeremy Gregory (Gregory has told the 91��Ƶ he only studies, and doesn’t endorse, building products). Concrete fares better than CLT in LEED and Green Globes building certification programs, Lemay added.

He called the idea of carbon sequestration a “myth,” and accused CLT proponents in the wood industry of “greenwashing.”

Far less carbon is stored than CLT advocates admit – about 15 percent, according to a 2007 Wilderness Society study, Lemay said.

If researchers look at a building’s entire life cycle, instead of just the manufacturing phase, concrete is the greener product, he said.

“The scientific research shows that concrete buildings have lower carbon footprints than wood buildings,” he said.

Lemay called concrete less harmful to the environment than timber, which he said still relies on harmful strategies like clear-cutting and pesticides.

A major argument of “Build with Strength” is fire safety. The group says CLT burns hotter and longer than conventional wood-frame construction, to the point where fire sprinklers become exhausted and a building collapses more suddenly. Neighbors of the site where a Manhattan wood skyscraper is planned are up in arms over the danger inherent in the project, according to Lemay.

“The wood lobby is going to tell you that wood doesn’t burn,” he said. “It’s amazing that they would make that claim.”

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