Crews are constructing a trades education facility at Oregon Coast Community College‘s campus in Newport.

The 22,000-square-foot Oregon Coast Advanced Technology & Trades (OCATT) Center is expected to cost approximately $30 million, according to Dave Price, vice president of engagement at the college. Officials are drawing money from a $33 million bond approved by Lincoln County voters in May 2024 as well as an $8 million contribution from the state approved by the Oregon Legislature.

The project team consists of architect partners GLAS Architects of Eugene and Hacker, civil engineer Mazzetti, structural engineer KPFF, and general contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis.

Staffers in the OCATT Center will provide hands-on training in construction and carpentry, HVAC systems, welding, industrial facility maintenance, and maritime technology. Also, pre-apprenticeship programs will be expanded from once a year to year-round.

Although the college currently has 16 workspaces at its Port of Toledo welding lab, it does not have sufficient linear space for pipe fitting instruction. The new building will fill that void.

Construction/carpentry will be a new program for the college.

“There’s some interesting things happening in the local high schools that we’re working very closely with (Lincoln County) School District so that we’re not being duplicative, and we’re building on what they’re doing,” Price said.

The OCATT Center will have four primary workspaces: a build lab, a mechanical lab, an electronic lab, and a “dirty build” lab for metalwork, welding and work on diesel engines. The build lab will have a wet area for aquaculture work tied to the Aquarium Science building.

Spaces in the OCATT Center will be able to accommodate a variety of uses. The plan is for programming to shift according to the changing market demands of the area, Price said, so the spaces can be used for decades.

“Flexibility has been crucial from day one when we pitched this as a proposal to the voters,” he said.

Oregon Coast Community College also may adjust its programming in consideration of what’s being offered at other coastal colleges.

“When Tillamook Bay or Clatsop rolls out a new program or another new facility that their taxpayers provide, we want to be mindful of the fact that we don’t want to all be competing in the same space,” Price said.

Future programming in Newport could include aquaculture, maritime welding, commercial diving and welding, and more. College officials do not want to pursue a new program if there is not at least 10 years of potential capacity for businesses in the region to hire those students so they can leverage their education into good paying jobs, Price said.

The OCATT Center will be able to receive a lot of natural light through glazing at both the front and back. The exterior building material will be metal siding with slate green chevrons in a random design. Exposed mass timber will jut out under the roofline, as well as in the interior space. The inside will also feature white walls.

“It’s not going to be kind of dark and metal inside like what you might expect for an industrial building,” Price said. “We really want this to be a bright, modern learning space.”

A roll-up glass door will allow space for a truck to enter or a boat to be dropped off inside. That will let students work indoors on large vehicles or vessels.

The new facility will be across from the Aquarium Science building. The two buildings’ roof lines will slope down toward each other, Price said.

Construction of the OCATT Center is under way. In November and December, the lot was cleared and graveled. Trenching has been ongoing. Last week, workers started pouring foundations and footings, and walls will not be far behind, Price said.

The facility is expected to open in fall 2027.

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Hacker has opened a Bend location to complement its Portland office.

Recent work in the area includes The Grove, a new development in Bend that includes the recently completed Grove Market Hall and Assembly workspaces, where Hacker‘s offices will be located; the soon-to-be completed Arête condominiums; the Universalist Unitarian Fellowship of Central Oregon; and the Lodge at Black Butte Ranch.

“Central Oregon is such a unique and dynamic landscape,” Corey Martin, principal designer for several of the firm’s Bend area projects, said in a news release. “There’s no place like it anywhere in the world and over the past 40 years we’ve been dedicated to designing buildings uniquely suited to this high desert landscape.”

Sarah Weber, interior designer and associate principal, and Tom Schmidt, architect and associate – both Bend residents – will work from the new office.

The Bend office is located at 2838 N.W. Crossing Dr., Suite 206, inside the Assembly, a co-working space within The Grove, a 67,000-square-foot, multi-function development that includes office space, retail, a food hall and housing.

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PROJECT: Division 28 Homes

LOCATION: 2871 S.E. Division St., Portland

SIZE: 46,656 square feet

COST: not provided

CONSTRUCTION START DATE: August 2020

ANTICIPATED END DATE: November 2021

DEVELOPER: Urban Development + Partners

ARCHITECT: Hacker

ENGINEERS/OTHER ASSOCIATES: Hunter-Davisson, IES Commercial, Kittelson & Associates, Ohm Systems, Pacific Foundation, Tapani, Wyatt Fire Protection

CONTRACTOR: Truebeck Construction

SUBCONTRACTORS: Anderson Poolworks, Closet Factory, Columbia Drywall Systems, Columbia Millwork, Conco, D&R Masonry Restoration, Dallas Glass & Window, Eastbank Contractor Appliances, Fireside Home Solutions, Floor Solutions, Flynn BEC LP,  GeoTech Foundation Company – West, Ha’s Painting, Interior Tech, Jack’s Overhead Door, JB Insulation, KONE, LaRusso Concrete, Mari Design, Pacific Construction Group, Standard TV & Appliance, TerraCalc Land Surveying, Teufel, Timberland Construction, Westech Construction

SIGNIFICANCE OF PROJECT: Located on Southeast Division Street, the four-story Division 28 Homes cohousing development was designed to meet the needs of a close group of friends who wanted to spend their last years together. The building will have both common areas and privacy distinctly different than those of typical apartments and condominiums.

The facade integrates terra-cotta and green spaces, and the interior features cross-laminated timber. The first floor includes a community space with areas for retail and restaurants. Parking is below grade. Above, there are living spaces with high-end interiors and an extensive private patio with green space. Additional amenities include a wine cellar and a pool.

The goal of the project is to create a space that benefits both residents and people at the street level.

“Building Blocks” spotlights noteworthy projects either under construction or approaching the start of construction. To submit a project for consideration, please visit: djcoregon.com/building-blocks.

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At Portland Community College’s Sylvania campus, in Southwest Portland, an aging concrete building will soon be transformed into a vibrant education hub.

The Health Technology building, constructed in the 1960s, is the third-oldest building on the Sylvania campus. The three-story concrete structure has a partial basement; currently, classrooms can be accessed only from the outside via covered walkways. Inside, low levels of light create a dark, contrasting environment making it difficult to perceive space.

A renovation of the Health Technology building is the largest project to come out of the 2017 bond measure in terms of scale, complexity and cost. The 100,000-square-foot renovation, covering the complex’s entire east side, will cost approximately $75 million.

Portland Community College is working with Hacker on the design. Lease Crutcher Lewis will serve as the contractor.

PCC’s managing architect, Krista Phillips, said the existing building was designed much like a strip mall – great when the weather is nice, but much less so when it’s not.

“(As) it exists today, its material (is) unwelcoming,” she said.

Because of the heavy-duty concrete, major framework adjustments or a rebuild would’ve been too tricky, Phillips said. All of the large concrete columns, low roofs, and overhanging walkways have to stay.

Instead, the design team devised a plan to open and warm up the interior spaces with wood features.

Currently, the atrium is one giant pathway with an oversize staircase, which takes up the entire space; the only thing students can do is pass through. Nick Hodges, a Hacker principal, said the new design opens the area up and shifts the stairs to create multiple platforms where students can stop and linger.

All of the building’s circulation also currently happens on the exterior walkways – creating a disconnection to the space.

Hodges said that around the 1960s, buildings were designed defensively as a response to unrest. This building was intended to allow occupants to park their motor vehicles, walk up and enter a classroom, and then leave without much interaction.

Today, there’s a shift toward collaborative spaces within academic buildings. Hodges said the team wanted the new design to address this idea. The building’s east wing will shift from a transitional zone into a collaborative one. All of the interior spaces and circulation will lead to the atrium; Hodges said this will allow students, faculty and staff to interact and connect better.

“The moves we’re doing are incredibly important and incredibly simple,” he said. “The bones of the building are so prominent that it drives so much of the response.”

All of the other design moves aim to create more visual connections to people and nature within the space, Hodges said. Nature helps ground people in their surroundings, he added, and that will be critical in this space.

Wood elements are being added throughout the building to create visual cues toward nature. Inside the atrium, Douglas fir panels are being added to the wall next to the staircase.

Expanding the views out of the building to nature is one simple move, Hodges said. The existing windows in the classrooms have dark-tinted glass. Instead of making a “big, bold, dramatic” move to a large window, glass is being replaced and a wood frame is being added.

“We knew that we needed to start fresh, with the exception of the structure,” Hodges said.

PCC’s students also requested that all bathrooms be made gender-free and an outdoor courtyard be created.

Trees and nature surround the campus, but there isn’t a place for students to congregate outside of classrooms. Hodges said the lawn is a really simple but important space.

For this whole renovation to occur, the building will need to be clear of all students, faculty and staff and stay unoccupied until spring 2023. The logistics of clearing the building had been one giant puzzle that took more than a year to complete, Phillips said. There are approximately seven programs that had to be transplanted throughout the campus or put into swing spaces. Fifteen additional projects emerged from this one project, she said.

Renovations are set to begin early this summer, after spring classes finish.

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At the beginning of a new year, uncertainty abounds. Projects in essential markets for architecture and engineering firms are plagued by question marks.

But industry leaders remain hopeful for what 2021 might bring. With multiple vaccines approved, returns of employees to offices could become possible in the near future.

When the pandemic first hit the U.S. hard in March 2020, opportunities became disconcerting, said Kurt Haapala, a Mahlum Architects partner. The firm primarily handles public work for health care providers, universities and K-12 schools.

Instantly, projections for 2020 and 2021 just vanished, Haapala said. Also, clients were unable to give estimates on when stalled projects would resume.

With work shifting from an office to homes, productivity decreased, Haapala said. There were people who suddenly didn’t have anything to do, he added. Employee wellness became one of the firm’s top priorities. Staffers were able to take home their comfortable chairs, extra monitors, keyboards and anything else needed to make remote work easier.

Although most existing projects continued moving ahead, Haapala said, getting clients’ attention became challenging. The health care industry became a front line, and universities and colleges froze projects because of financial losses. K-12 school officials became preoccupied with figuring out remote learning.

Mahlum switched to a conservative financial mindset and reduced some benefit spending.

“We started to look at the end of the year as a break-even strategy,” Haapala said. “We weren’t looking at profits on projects but rather keep the ship afloat and get through the year.”

The firm began to regularly update employees about its financial health.

“I think that bred confidence in the leadership and that we weren’t closing up shop,” Haapala said.

Haapala doesn’t think Mahlum is out of the woods yet. The firm will continue to be conservative financially. It’s also creating an interruption plan to become nimbler if another pandemic or crisis dramatically shifts workflow.

Al Barkouli, chairman and CEO of David Evans and Associates Inc., said the company is keeping a constant eye on its key markets – housing, transportation and municipal. If local agencies’ funding were to drop significantly, industrial engineering companies could experience economic shortfalls, he said.

The challenge of guiding the company in a pandemic so far, Barkouli said, is staying adaptive.

Hacker knows all about making adjustments, said Sarah Hacker, a principal with the architecture firm. It’s continually focusing on fundamentals in order to maintain operations and keep employees employed, she said.

The architecture firm moved into a new space in District Office, in the Central Eastside Industrial District, on March 9, 2020. A week later, employees began working from home.

When developing policies, the firm has taken a person-by-person approach and tried to be really flexible, Hacker said. A lot of policies try to be one-size-fits-all, but that doesn’t work right now, she added.

Construction was able to finish in 2020 on projects that had reached a certain point, but timelines did need to shift, Hacker said. However, one of the firm’s biggest markets is office space, and many such projects either stopped indefinitely or paused. But Hacker said she’s starting to see more paused projects begin to ramp up.

Throughout remote work, Hacker said employees have been communicating in ways that they haven’t before. One problem, she added, is that it can be hard to read the room and see how people are feeling over Zoom and emails.

A big plus, however, has been an increase in equity, Hacker said. Previously, she explained, groups would stand around a whiteboard while usually just one person sketched ideas. But in the digital environment more people have been able to contribute ideas.

Employees are continuing work remotely, Hacker said, with an assumption that there will be a long transition period for them to return to the office. However, maintaining equity during the transition period could be challenging, she added, because people not in the office could feel disconnected or excluded. For example, attendees at a meeting could mostly be in person, but a few could be watching on a screen.

Once vaccines become more widely available, the industry could see another dramatic shift as workers return to offices.

“I think some different new normal will be emerging,” Barkouli said.

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A Sullivan’s Gulch apartment building has become Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum.

TwentyTwenty, with 162 units, was designed by Hacker for PHK Development. General contractor Andersen Construction completed its work in 2019.

The building received 85.5 LEED points; 80 is needed for platinum. Building systems that helped earn the rating include high-performance glazing and insulation, energy-efficient appliances and a highly efficient heating and cooling system that uses ductless mini-split units and heat pumps.

“We designed the units to optimize fresh air indoors and minimize exposure to airborne toxins and pollutants,” said Patrick Kessi, president and founder of PHK Development.

PHK’s most recent major project, The Windward in Lake Oswego, received a LEED gold rating.

Kessi said TwentyTwenty has hit its leasing goals to date. Coast Property Management is handling leasing for the building.

Advertised rents start at $1,599 a month for a one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit with 481 square feet. A 1,489-square-foot penthouse with two bedrooms and two bathrooms rents for $4,775. The building also has two levels of underground parking.

The units were originally built as condominiums, but PHK Development switched them to apartments.

TwentyTwenty is a 2020 91��Ƶ TopProjects finalist in the multifamily category.

Kessi said his next development project is a retail building in Scappoose.

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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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Urban Development + Partners is moving forward with plans for a three-building mixed-use development that would anchor the north end of downtown Lake Oswego.

The Lake Oswego Redevelopment Agency‘s board last month voted to authorize negotiations with UD+P for a memorandum of understanding and a disposition and development agreement for the project, which is expected to cost more than $60 million.

The Portland developer plans to construct three buildings on a 1.07-acre site that was cobbled together by the city of Lake Oswego to bring new development. The city spent $6.8 million to assemble the parcels, which are for now mostly covered by surface parking lots.

A 51-room boutique hotel would occupy the westernmost parcel at B Avenue and First Street, and come from the same people behind the Atticus Hotel – a luxurious wine-country retreat in McMinnville. The Lake Oswego hotel is likely to be part of the Atticus brand, said Sarah Zahn, UD+P’s development director.

Architect Nathan Cooprider designed the McMinnville hotel and is on board to design its Lake Oswego counterpart. Plans call for a four-story, 45,000-square-foot building, Zahn said.

The middle parcel would have a four-story, 45-unit apartment building.

The third parcel would have 30,000 square feet of office space. It would rise as three main floors, with a small fourth floor opening onto a rooftop deck.

“At UD+P, our major focus is really urban infill – walkable, community-based development – and we feel like this location in downtown Lake Oswego is a good opportunity to continue that focus,” Zahn said.

Hacker is designing the office and residential structures. DCI Engineers is also working on the project.

UD+P has not selected a general contractor. The developer will invite handpicked contractors to participate in a selection process, Zahn said.

For the city of Lake Oswego, the plan would fulfill a long-held goal to anchor the north side of downtown and to complement The Windward and other new developments to the south. Lake Oswego officials refer to the UD+P project as North Anchor.

“We’re really looking at something to energize a compact shopping district,” said Sidaro Sin, redevelopment manager for the city.

Four-story buildings are appropriate for the existing scale of downtown, Sin said.

“The key thing here is kind of a balance between a development that works and also fits within the character of Lake Oswego,” he said.

Zahn expressed hope that the boutique hotel would work in concert with – a new four-story, mixed-use building from the Haladay family’s 10 Branch development company that includes a 10,000-square-foot event center and wedding venue.

“We feel like there’s demand in Lake Oswego for all of these uses,” she said.

UD+P is Lake Oswego’s latest business partner for North Anchor. A previous request for proposals led to the city selecting Sturgeon Development Partners; however, the firm withdrew from the project last year. Sturgeon Development Partners had planned a somewhat different project, with a larger, 132-room hotel, but no multifamily or office space.

“They weren’t able to secure all the financing that they needed at the time,” Sin said. “It was amicable.”

Vanessa Sturgeon, a principal and founder of Sturgeon Development Partners, said local politics in Lake Oswego, including demands by one city councilor for affordable housing, sank the project.

“It ended up spooking our investors,” she said. “The Lake Oswego political environment is what killed the deal.”

Lake Oswego then launched a second request for proposals in late 2019 that led to the connection with UD+P.

UD+P is confident it will be able to complete the project despite the economic upheaval wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, Zahn said.

“We have our own investment fund that we bring to bear on projects, so our horizon is a long-term horizon,” she said. “This gives us some more flexibility.”

UD+P is not obligated to buy the land right away, Zahn said.

“We can work with the city,” she said.

The city and developer are on track to execute a memorandum of understanding in June, and a disposition and development agreement in September, Zahn said.

“We would start construction next summer,” she said. “So hopefully, from a timing perspective, we’ll be at a good time for starting a project and financing a project.”

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It’s out with the ODOT Blocks, and in with the Workshop Blocks.

Beam Development is moving forward with Prosper Portland to develop the first of three vacant blocks in the Central Eastside Industrial District. The agency’s board on Wednesday voted unanimously to authorize negotiations with Beam for a 99-year ground lease and a disposition and development agreement.

Beam would also have exclusive development rights on two neighboring blocks acquired from the Oregon Department of Transportation in 2017. All three blocks are pinched between Water Avenue and the Eastbank Esplanade in the fast-growing employment area.

The lease agreement would allow Beam the option to purchase the property in year 20 and again in year 30.

Beam plans to build approximately 100,000 square feet of industrial office space on Block A – the northernmost block between Taylor and Salmon streets along Water Avenue. The developer is branding the project Workshop Blocks.

The building program for Block A would revolve around what Beam calls an “inclusive technology cluster.” A nonprofit is being sought to potentially anchor the ground floor. The building would have a modest complement of retail space and, possibly, on-site day care. The upper floors would be dedicated to industrial office space. Some of the office space is likely to be coworking or flexible office, said Jonathan Malsin, a Beam principal.

“We’re focused on continuing to deliver innovative office space,” Malsin said during Wednesday’s Prosper Portland board meeting, which was a video conference.

The structure is likely to be constructed of cross-laminated timber, Malsin said, and build upon Beam’s experience with District Office – a six-story office building on Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

The Block A building would have one level of underground parking.

Hacker, which designed District Office, is on board to design the Workshop Blocks building on Block A. Colas Construction will serve as general contractor.

Prosper Portland will contribute $725,000 to remove polluted soil from the site.

Construction is expected to begin on Block A in 2022, and be completed the following year. The build-out of all three blocks is expected to be done by 2027.

Conceptual plans for the other two blocks imagine Block B centering on creative production, and Block C focusing on food and beverage production and related retail.

Zoning in the industrial district limits retail and residential use. The developable parcels are 34,809 square feet, 34,862 square feet and 25,601 square feet, respectively.

Beam was chosen as the developer in May 2018 after Prosper Portland’s request for proposals drew five applications.

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Ben Kaiser, owner and principal of Kaiser Group + Path Architecture, believes the building industry can play a big role in reducing carbon emissions and combating global climate change by adopting mass-timber construction. So the multidisciplinary firm behind Carbon12, an eight-story mixed-use building in North/Northeast Portland that remains the tallest one in the U.S. made of mass timber, has decided to share its knowledge and experience.

Kaiser + Path is making available online all drawings, technical specifications and engineering documents related to Carbon12 at .

The obvious question is why?

“Sometimes I ask myself the same question,” Kaiser said. “It’s interesting because it’s such a new world, the world of mass timber, that we’d like more people to join us in the undertaking. We’re convinced it’s the correct path forward for the environment, but just us doing it by ourselves in Portland is not going to make that big of an impact. So we really feel the more people who can come and join us and build momentum, the better it will be for the environment and the timber industry in the Northwest.”

Portland firm Hacker is another early adopter of mass-timber construction, and recently moved into its new headquarters in District Office – a six-story, mass-timber office building in the Buckman neighborhood. Corey Martin, a Hacker principal, said he’s not particularly surprised by the decision by Kaiser + Path to release project documents.

“The mass timber movement is bringing together people and professionals in our world in ways that other things haven’t,” Martin said, “because the innovation and change in what’s possible is literally changing every minute as we work in real time. There’s a lot of mutual benefit for us to share. It’s like an open-source community that we have, so it’s fitting in with that.”

Carbon12, completed in 2018, took the industry by storm and generated substantial press for Kaiser + Path. The project team worked with city and state officials to circumvent restrictive codes limiting heights of wood buildings. Carbon12, at 85 feet, became the tallest building in the country with cross-laminated timber, glulam beams and columns, and other mass-timber elements.

“We were blown away by all the ways mass timber keeps improving the conversations,” Kaiser said. “We were glad we broke through the 65-foot height limit for wood; we now have a new precedent of 85 feet, and that was a big change for the United States.”

The project team knew it was the right path forward, Kaiser said. But additional benefits were found along the way. The project turned into a proving ground for mass timber, thanks to structural testing requirements pushed by the city and state.

“We kept discovering great things about the mass-timber products,” he said. “These are far superior in seismic events. These buildings are just 30 percent the weight of a concrete building, and you can imagine as you go higher, 70 percent less mass is a lot easier to restrain with regard to lateral forces.”

Mass-timber buildings also impact the foundation less, allowing their use on formerly polluted sites or brownfield sites.

“Carbon sequestration is why we got into it,” Kaiser said. “But the modularity, seismic superiority and the aesthetics all kept improving the conversation for us.”

Taylor Cabot, now a Swinerton Mass Timber project manager, served in that role for Kaiser + Path during the Carbon12 project.

“(Carbon 12) was built before codes, so we went pretty much where we wanted to go with it,” she said during a recent Women in Construction Week event. “There was no code path forward, and the city said, ‘This is beyond our scope.’”

The state of Oregon, however, provided more regulatory framework. The Oregon Building Codes Division was in the process of creating a method for reviewing cross-laminated-timber buildings for local jurisdictions and wound up collaborating with the city of Portland’s structural engineer, fire marshal and life-safety reviewer.

The result was a unique review process wherein the city was responsible for aspects of the building outside of the physical structure, while the state reviewed structural and fire and life safety elements.

“The good news is we took a pretty prescriptive path,” Cabot said. “It really allowed us to hear rumors or feel the feel of people getting nervous about what they were seeing and immediately addressing them. We’re still building a lot of buildings in Type III, but we will all be moving very quickly to Type IV, which has a lot of advantages and will speed up the process. I’m excited because this will allow projects to move through the permitting process a lot faster.”

The stream of industry inquiries and requests for information about Carbon12 also played a role in the decision to open it up for examination. Kaiser estimated the firm has given more than 200 tours of the building.

“That’s the exciting thing,” he said. “We’ve joined a like-minded community of folks internationally. If we were doing strip malls in Phoenix, no one would be calling us. But since we’re doing something innovative and exciting, we’re getting calls and visits from people around the world. That’s one of the nicest outcomes we hadn’t planned for.”

Martin wholeheartedly agrees.

“We all share the same consultants, the same engineers – there’s a lot of cross-pollination there,” he said. “Structural systems weren’t a thing we all looked at as a point of innovation for a long time in normal projects. But now, the structural system is this big question mark and this big point of conversation, so it’s really fun. That’s why we’re all wanting to share stuff.”

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