The Oregon Sustainability Center was pitched by former Portland Mayor Sam Adams and former Gov. Ted Kulongoski as a way to advance the green reputation of the city and state. Instead, it became a reminder of the substantial “green” needed to pay for development of a net-zero commercial building.

Ultimately, the project fell apart as the Oregon Legislature voted not to approve $80 million in bonds.

“Maybe we were trying to do too much too fast,” said Steve Clem, vice president of preconstruction for Skanska USA Building, which was part of the project team. “People in other parts of the state feel like we always get center stage. It never got traction in the Legislature.”

Only two buildings in Oregon – the Hood River Middle School Music and Science Building and Pringle Creek’s Painters Hall in Salem – have received from Seattle-based International Living Future Institute. Nationally, 15 buildings – mostly educational institutions and other commercial structures – have been certified, according to the ILFI.

Certification accounts for multiple factors including energy performance and conservation, and requires buildings to generate at least as much energy as they consume on site. Buildings can qualify after one year of occupancy.

Economics are holding back more commercial net-zero projects from moving forward, Clem said.

“It’s got to make financial sense,” he said. “We can’t just keep doing experimental projects and hope that people continue to invest extra money for the sake of doing the right thing.”

Clem, who co-authored a looking at the costs and incentives of net-zero building development in Washington, D.C., says the status quo could improve via implementation of new policies that provide incentives.

“The story in Portland is that we don’t have a deep green building policy,” he said. “We don’t have a policy that would give incentives for people who want to outperform the sustainability metric.”

The city of Seattle, as part of the program, allows developers to request building code exemptions in exchange for meeting ILFI’s Living Building Challenge. In Portland, no such policy exists, Clem said.

“If you can build an extra floor or two, it becomes very economical when it comes to development,” he said. “The more you can stack on top, the more economical it becomes.”

The Energy Trust of Oregon offers for greater energy efficiency, but they focus more on low-cost efforts rather than design and construction of a net-zero building, said Oliver Kesting, commercial sector lead for the nonprofit. It administers incentive programs for utilities based on federal guidelines.

“As you push further and further into a (highly energy-efficient) building, there may be things that would save energy, but it would come at a cost too high to incentivize because of our cost targets,” he said. “We cannot incentivize it because it would not provide value to the ratepayer.”

The Energy Trust of Oregon rewards projects that exceed code by at least 30 percent; however, net-zero projects, which exceed code by 60 percent or more, are not fully compensated, Kesting said.

“As you get closer and closer to net zero, it’s going to get harder and harder to increase those percentage points,” he said. “As you get further and need to improve the envelope or install better windows – the deeper you get into net zero, the steeper the barriers.”

Some net-zero techniques may not immediately increase energy savings, but create long-term sustainability and should be encouraged through incentives, said Alex Boetzel, chief innovation officer at Green Hammer. He cited envelope glazing, which extends a building’s life span.

“It costs a lot of money, but saves little energy per their calculation,” he said. “This calculation that they’re using falls short. I have a strong belief that we should incentivize those more.”

House Bill 2801, which the Oregon Legislature passed in 2013, could help. The rules of a new program are still being formed, Kesting said, but developers could receive incentives for taking measures such as glazing when they are bundled with other measures that increase energy savings.

Power generation also is a significant hurdle holding back more development of net-zero commercial buildings, Clem said. As buildings increase in size, they need more photovoltaic panels to provide power and feed it back into the grid. Taller buildings are further challenged because one floor of photovoltaic panels feeds only five or six floors of energy usage, he said.

“You can’t really be net zero building by building,” he said. “Either you locate the panels elsewhere or you find a way to share (photovoltaics) between buildings, or it doesn’t work.”

The Hassalo on Eighth project in the Lloyd District is the best example of an integrated approach to water, waste, transportation and power usage connected among different buildings, Clem said.

Before the funding for the Oregon Sustainability Center vanished, the project team had scaled the building to eight stories and 130,000 square feet. The group also was prepared to rely on occupants to further decrease energy usage, said SERA Architects principal Clark Brockman, who worked on the project.

More than 50 percent of the building’s energy consumption would have come from tenants’ usage of computers, phones, heaters and coffee makers, he said.

“What was so interesting working on the OSC was that we met with tenants,” he said. “There is only so much (photovoltaic energy) that you could produce to be net zero. You couldn’t get there without engaging the occupants.”

To achieve net-zero energy usage, requirements were placed on the building’s owner and operator.

“Right now, there aren’t that many owners that are eager to do it,” Brockman said.

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Sam Adams‘ tenure as Portland’s mayor ends this week, and many members of the architecture, construction and development industries say the era will be remembered as one when the city was hamstrung by the recession.

Some in the industry praise Adams for his determination to push for projects under tough circumstances, even though many never came to light. Others say the downturn incapacitated his office.

“The mayor’s term was coincidentally a horrible time for construction broadly,” said John Killin, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors’ Pacific Northwest chapter. “His term was riddled with a downturn no one foresaw and no one locally could easily solve.”

In January 2009, when Adams took office, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report that showed the construction industry had lost approximately 1 million jobs since peaking two years earlier. The report also showed that 111,000 jobs were lost in that month.

Local architecture, engineering, contracting and development firms had less work than ever, and some had to close their doors as a result.

However, despite budget shortfalls, Adams tried to stimulate job growth by allocating money for a variety of capital improvements. Some, such as the Sellwood Bridge replacement project, are moving forward; others, such as the Oregon Sustainability Center, were put to rest.

Adams’ ideas will help incite future development, according to Gerding Edlen CEO Mark Edlen. He believes that the relationships Adams has developed between the city and educational institutions will lead to more projects like those under way for Oregon Health & Science University and Portland State University.

“(Adams’) drive toward connecting PSU and OHSU to the city in a stronger, more meaningful fashion … has made a huge difference for those of us in (the) commercial world here,” he said. “Sam has a true love of … making connections between the cultural community and the built community through the arts, schools and others.”

Adams’ efforts to make Portland one of the nation’s most sustainable and transportation-accessible cities will help it attract young innovators and creators, Edlen said.

Other unfinished projects pushed by Adams, such as West Hayden Island development and the Memorial Coliseum renovation, will benefit the built industry greatly, said Brian Owendoff of Capacity Commercial Group and formerly of Opus Northwest, which folded during the recession.

“Mayor Adams was a man of action,” he said. “He had the courage to champion several issues that prior mayors chose not to or could not address.”

Perhaps Adams’ biggest direct influence on construction was his commitment to affordable housing. In 2007, while serving on City Council, Adams and three other councilors voted to set aside a 30 percent citywide average of urban renewal money for affordable housing.

Adams has since reinforced that policy by developing more urban renewal areas and establishing the Portland Housing Bureau. As a result, $150 million worth of housing has been built during his tenure, according to Nick Sauvie, executive director of Rose Community Development, a local affordable housing developer.

“Sam Adams was the driving force in creating the city’s affordable housing set-aside,” he said. “Thousands of Portlanders now have safe, affordable housing because (of) his efforts.”

Other industry stakeholders say the results of Adams’ tenure are less measurable. Many parties were affected by changes made to the Bureau of Development Services under Adams’ watch. In the last four years, system development charges have increased significantly and the number of BDS employees has dropped, resulting in slower turnaround times and fewer inspections.

Brian Emerick, owner of Emerick Architects, said he isn’t sure who should be blamed for the situation.

“With city coffers being tight, I don’t believe there’s a lot of political interest in pursuing (a solution) at this time, leaving us in our present situation of paying more for less at BDS,” he said. “I think these have been more a reflection of the economy and how BDS is funded, rather than something that is a result of the mayor’s policy.”

Meanwhile, the economy hindered Adams’ ability to influence large infrastructure projects such as the Columbia River Crossing or the Oregon Sustainability Center, Killin said.

“He had no opportunity to be the opener of major new developments or fight against them,” he said.

It appears that Mayor-elect Charlie Hales will take office at a more stable economic time than Adams did.

“Would we all have liked to see more tangible success stories? Of course,” said Christopher Linn, a principal with Boora Architects. “But there were factors beyond any single person’s control that made it close to impossible.”

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The project is kaput, but one of its partners isn’t giving up on the concept.

, in collaboration with , is seeking a new, highly efficient office space for itself near downtown Portland. The company’s aspirations are for a building net zero for energy, water and waste, and possibly able to achieve the – billed as the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment.

Interface President Omid Nabipoor said the goal is to push the envelope of green construction and prove to the industry that it can be done cost-effectively.

“We want to be part of a market and industry transformation,” Nabipoor said. “We believe that in order for us to reverse the effects of buildings, or at least hold it where it is on the environment, we need to start having buildings that are regenerative or have the lightest footprint possible.”

Interface’s lease at its 27,000-square-foot office in the Mohawk Building downtown expires in August 2014. The company hopes to move the following month, Nabipoor said.

Interface is accepting submissions of interest, and beginning Dec. 15, Norris, Beggs & Simpson will respond with requests for proposals from parties representing ideas that meet project criteria. Specifically, the company is looking for 30,000 square feet (with a capacity for 50,000), within two miles of the downtown core.

It also needs to be affordable, which Nabipoor said is possible.

“We’re not looking for fancy finishes,” he said. “We’re very much organic. We’re very simple, and what it’s about is performance of the building – not necessarily how it looks.”

Interface Engineering specializes in the performance of building systems; it has designed more than 110 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rated projects around the world. It designed the net-zero Newberg campus for Portland Community College, and it’s working on a Living Building Challenge project at Chatham University’s Eden Hall campus.

Interface also participated in the Oregon Sustainability Center project, which was supposed to produce a net-zero building that would’ve included the company’s offices. But the effort fizzled amid a lack of political support.

Despite the setback, Nabipoor believes the concepts have marketability.

LEED-rated buildings exist throughout the city. And those structures earn, on average, 4.11 percent more in rent than non-LEED ones, according to a 2011 report by CBRE.

Nabipoor said he is willing to pay up to $30 per square foot in rent for his envisioned office space. The average rent in the Central Business District is $22.20, according to a third-quarter market report by Kidder Mathews.

The Portland Development Commission is interested in offering support for Interface’s endeavor. Lisa Abuaf, PDC central city manager, said helping businesses advance green technology helps Portland professionals compete on national and international playing fields. The PDC’s own LEED requirements, she said, have helped spur the industry locally.

Nabipoor, however, thinks too much emphasis is placed on LEED. There’s more merit, he said, in gauging performance, which is why he likes the idea of a net-zero or living building.

Perhaps the closest example is the Bullitt Center in Seattle, which is slated to open next spring. The 50,000-square-foot building will generate as much energy and collect as much water as it uses. Wastewater and carbon emissions will be treated on site, and sunlight will be able to reach all 200 potential occupants.

Ron Rochon, managing partner of the Miller Hull Partnership, the project’s architect, said all designs were financially feasible.

“The vision of the Bullitt Center was to create a building like this but to try and do it on a developer model,” he said. “It was not the mode of the project to just throw money at it to get it done … It’s a lean, mean building, and the rents are comparable to Class A rents in Seattle.”

The project has a $30 million budget, and $18 million went toward construction ($365 per square foot).

But as the cost of energy increases, so too will the demand for similar solutions, Rochon said. The Miller Hull Partnership already is working with Interface on a net-zero project at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing near Tijuana. Rochon said Western Michigan University also is seeking proposals for a living building.

Rochon said each new project makes the next one easier. For design of the Bullitt Center, team members researched more than 1,000 materials to ensure that none was on the red list. That information now is accessible to others.

Nevertheless, Rochon said several living building projects will need to be completed, and several years will need to pass to prove their performance, before the real estate industry can begin to monetize the value of sustainability.

Of course, no building is truly sustainable. Each one uses natural resources and leaves an environmental footprint. Nabipoor acknowledges that the most sustainable solution is always reuse of an existing resource, and so Interface will entertain proposals for renovations.

But if no existing options prove compatible with Interface’s efficiency goals, it’s ready for new construction. Nabipoor also admitted to a playful, competitive desire to best the Bullitt Center and show what his company can do.

“We are engineers and innovators, and so it’s more about what we learn that gets us new business, and the new things we do and apply to our clients’ projects,” he said. “There’s always a market value if you walk your talk.”

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Last week, Portland Mayor Sam Adams, a longtime advocate for the Oregon Sustainability Center, acknowledged that it won’t be built.

His disappointment was shared by the project team, said Steve Clem, director of preconstruction for general contractor .

“To the project team, it was much more than a shrine to Mayor Adams,” he said. “This was a quantum leap for the design community.”

Clem and other team members, including developers, engineers and architects, say the strategies developed for the project were innovative and have helped them gain work elsewhere.

“We continue to leverage (the strategies), bringing all that experience together on these new projects,” Clem said. “People keep looking to Portland and the team members to tell (them) what we learned even though we didn’t have the pleasure of actually building it.”

The OSC, at one time a $72 million project, was expected to become the world’s first net-zero high-rise, according to city officials.

It was going to achieve Living Building Challenge goals via innovative design strategies, said Omid Nabipoor, president of .

For example, advanced water reclamation was planned for gray water and black water. Also, a direct current loop would have reduced power usage by letting computers and other machines operate without power transformers.

These strategies are not the only reason Interface Engineering is gaining work (in a press release, Adams said the OSC played a significant role in the firm getting a five-year contract in Qatar), but they are being used on new projects, Nabipoor said.

“We are doing work all over the nation basically as a result of our knowledge gained through this project and others on sustainable design,” he said. “(The OSC) was never fully designed, but there were a lot of interesting designs that were developed that we use.”

For , the most valuable strategy learned was tenant engagement. A net-zero building’s performance is dependent, in part, on occupants. So, the design team came up with ways to educate tenants and communicate with them regularly; for example, one idea was for an iPhone application to inform tenants of the building’s energy consumption.

“Changing tenants’ habits and expectations about how they use a building was the quickest way to achieve significant efficiencies and savings,” said Kyle Andersen, an architect with GBD. “We learned a great deal from working on the OSC.”

The firm also used the project to push the boundaries of what was feasible in regard to renewable solar energy technology, sustainable material sourcing and on-site wastewater treatment via constructed wetlands.

The lessons learned are being applied to some of the firm’s current projects, such as the four-tower Lloyd Blocks and the Con-way Master Plan, Andersen said.

The project also revealed how everything in a net-zero building ties together, Clem said. Everything – from energy use to aesthetics – is related and integrated, he said. As a result, design team members had to take on multiple roles.

“It was very unclear at times of who was doing what and I thought that was the beauty of the whole thing,” he said. “Contractually we all knew our roles, but because everything was so interrelated, we couldn’t just stick to our script.”

Skanska has taken the strategies it has learned and used them on multiple projects around the country, including one for the Boy Scouts of America in West Virginia and a Living Building Challenge effort for the University of Florida.

“The OSC was a leap, one we thought the city and region was ready to take,” Clem said. “With our partners in the design community, we’re going to keep on looking for a way to make that leap.”

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Mayor Sam Adams on Friday announced that the proposed Oregon Sustainability Center will not be built.

Adams’ reasoning was that the $63.3 million project did not have enough City Council votes to move forward.

The center was expected to be built near the Portland State University campus at Southwest Fourth Avenue and Montgomery Street. Adams called it a “laboratory for green technology,” which was designed to be the largest net-zero high rise ever built.

However, the project faced countless roadblocks since first being proposed in 2009. The biggest came last year, when the Oregon Legislature blocked state bonds for the project. As a result, the Oregon University System, one of the building’s expected tenants, backed out.

In a released statement, Adams thanked all the partners involved in the project’s planning process, which cost the city $2.3 million.

He went one step further to say that the partners involved, which included GBD and SERA Architects, Skanska Construction and Interface Engineering, were able to use the design strategies they developed for the project to gain work elsewhere.

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In the wake of the news that the Oregon Sustainability Center will not move forward this year as its supporters hoped, Mayor Sam Adams announced that the city of Portland is not ready to give up on the project.

The Oregon Legislature wrapped up its short session on Monday and failed to approve a market rate loan request to help build the $61.7 million project. Adams, one of the Sustainability Center’s key advocates, a few hours before the official close of the session.

“It is disappointing that partisan, election-year politics trumped progress. This is evidenced by the fact that the Federal Economic Development Administration awarded the project a grant, but the state refused to provide a market rate loan,” Adams said in the statement.

But Adams went on to say that the city will continue to explore project alternatives, working with Portland State University, the Oregon University System, and the other project partners.

The project partners have not settled on an alternative to pursue, but several businesses and local firms have supported the project over the years.

In May 2011, was the first retail tenant to sign a lease commitment with the OSC. Since then, local firms and both signed letters of interest for space within the building.

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The proposal to build the Oregon Sustainability Center, a planned $61.7 million green building showpiece, may be dead in the water. As the short state legislative session comes to a close, it is all but certain that the requested state bonds – which cover more than half of the project costs – will not be approved.

Both of the leaders of the House of Representatives, co-Speakers Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, and Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, say there is no chance that the request for $37 million in state bonds for the seven-story project will even make it onto the agenda before the session ends. The session is expected to end Tuesday.

The Oregon Sustainability Center is pitched as the greenest high-rise planned in the country. The 130,000-square-foot project would be the tallest mixed-use building to meet the Living Building Challenge, widely viewed as the world’s toughest green building standard.

Project supporters, including Portland Mayor Sam Adams, say that it would solidify Oregon’s position as a leader in green building, and also create short- and long-term jobs.

But expected high construction costs and rental rates are turnoffs for some of the state’s lawmakers, who contend that taxpayers could be on the hook for millions of dollars if the building weren’t filled with tenants.

“It may be a little ahead of its time,” Hanna said. “If it really pencils out, why wouldn’t the private sector finance and build it?”

The project, planned for the eastern edge of Portland State University’s downtown campus, has three partners: the state, the city and the university system. Without the state bonds, which would be repaid via lease revenues, the project probably cannot go forward.

Roblan, a devoted supporter of the project, said time constraints of the short session combined with Republican opposition to the project made it impossible to get a vote on the bonding package.

“I think we’ve missed an opportunity here,” Roblan said. “We were unable to convince my friends across the aisle of the importance of this particular project and the willingness of the university system and others to get into debt for it.”

Both speakers would need to support the bond authorization for it to move forward in the House, but Hanna has opposed the expense of the building and questioned the high lease prices from the get-go. Last spring, he and other legislators refused to back the bonds to build the center, and asked the project team to answer more than two dozen questions to allay some uncertainty.

The joint Ways and Means committee in September accepted the resulting 100-page report, which made a case for tenancy as well as the center’s comparatively high construction costs and lease rates.

But questions linger in Salem.

“There were some inconsistencies that didn’t help with the progress of the project,” Hanna said, specifically calling out Portland City Council’s narrow approval of the bond levy last September and false rumors about becoming a primary tenant in the building.

Some of the state’s fiscal advisers are wary of the project, cautioning legislators against “getting into the development business,” according to Sen. David Nelson, R-Pendleton, who supports the project.

The capital bonds requested for the OSC are traditionally used to help build university dormitories and student unions.

“The source of the money is really the hang-up on this thing,” Nelson said. “But in my mind, I like to build things, and this project fits in with Oregon’s image of being a green state.”

At press time, representatives from Adams’ office and the Portland Development Commission said it was premature to comment on the looming funding failure, but state-level supporters hope that the OSC team will devise a new plan.

“This project may cost more per square foot, but it will only get cheaper after we do the first one,” Roblan said. “I don’t know whether they will keep going, but I hope they make it leaner and come back and ask again in 2013. It’s one of those projects that will help all Oregonians.”

In a budget note issued in August 2011, the OSC team emphasized that state bonds were critical to project success, but laid out alternatives in case the Legislature didn’t come through during the short session.

Possibilities include constructing a smaller version of a Living Building Challenge building in order to stay on schedule and break ground by the end of 2012; delaying the schedule but moving ahead with the original design; or building a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum-rated building rather than a living building.

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2011 was a busy year for sustainable construction, with plenty of momentum being carried into next year. A key project includes the construction of the ‘s renewable structure, a future centerpiece to Portland State University’s ever-expanding hub of green activity.

The OSC building underwent a design feasibility study in 2008, with construction expected to break ground in the third quarter of 2012. The target completion date for this structure is the end of 2013, with the 130,000-square-foot building’s costs cited at just over $60 million.

The building gets attention for its proposed triple-net-zero functionality. Urban design students aside, that fancy phrase means it will produce heat and energy for itself while not using external water sources or generating waste.

This lofty idea was scaled back from more than $100 million in scope to its current form, which will receive some state funding and rely on tenants paying high rent to recoup its costs, in addition to being marketed as having much lower long-term costs than a non-sustainable counterpart. It’s very forward thinking and certainly raises the already high green profile of Portland and PSU…assuming that it gets finished on time and on budget. Expect plenty of updates through 2012 on this beacon of building efficiency—not to mention even more construction on the eastern fringe of the PSU campus, where the , and forthcoming College Station housing building have spelled nearly five years of ongoing construction along that corridor.

Another project of note is the soon-to-be-completed Norm Apartments in Northwest, featuring a dozen units and several eco-friendly aspects as part of the property portfolio of WDC Properties. Construction is expected to wrap up at the end of this year, and the building is up for sale in Portland’s competitive multi-family housing market that boasts just a as of November 2011.

The in Southwest Portland earned awards for its timber frame and the thermal efficiency of the project. McMinnville-based seeks to build on its success as the project’s contributor of reclaimed wood. As of December 2011, it has restored over 20 million board feet of lumber that would otherwise have been junked.

Rendering courtesy of SERA Architects

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moved its office from its former Beaverton location into the downtown Portland KOIN Center this week. After a 3-month renovation, employees moved into the office on Nov. 14.

In August of this year, Skanska was named as a potential tenant for the prospective building, for which Skanska is the general contractor. At the time, Skanska representatives would not comment on the rumor, which was also found in documents submitted by the sustainability center team to the Oregon Legislature.

This week, Skanska general manager Ross Vroman said that the company was “never going in there,” and when that rumor was circulating in August, Skanska had already signed a lease for the KOIN center space.

“The Sustainability Center has a long way to go,” he said. “We had expressed interest in being a possible tenant, but there’s no timetable. The building’s not ready to go.”

At the KOIN Center, Skanska rents 17,000 square feet on the building’s third floor. It will be the company’s only Portland office and will have 80 seats. Though Skanska has 175 salaried employees in the USA branch, many work out of the office, Vroman said.

The new office is smaller than the building Skanska formerly occupied in Beaverton, Vroman said.

“We actually became more efficient and downsized,” he said.

Skanska has wanted to move from its downtown office since 2008 and actually planned to move into the Meier and Frank building, Vroman said.

“Then the economy happened,” he said. “But there was still a desire to be (downtown) for employee satisfaction. Our clients and customers are downtown, as well as a lot of our partners in the industry.”

When asked why the KOIN Center was the home Skanska chose, Vroman cited the building’s LEED existing building status and a “cost-competitive lease.”

“We’ll be here for a while,” Vroman said.

courtesy of Curtis Gregory Perry via Flickr

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The Oregon Sustainability Center project was halted earlier this year when a request for $38 million in bonding approval was deferred by the state Legislature – even though approval had been granted for a larger amount in the 2009 legislative session.

But the center is only one of more than a dozen Oregon University System capital construction projects facing delays. These efforts at public universities around the state are being held up because either bonding approval was deferred, granted only partially or not considered because the OUS withdrew its request.

Design and construction firms, as well as the OUS, had fully expected these large projects to go forward – up until the day they were stopped suddenly because of legislative action. Some of these firms’ officials say it’s a reminder that even unusual delays like these are to be expected in a difficult economic climate.

The planned Student Experience Center is expected to fill Oregon State University’s need for a new student union – the existing one was built in 1928, principal James Meyer said. The OSU student body in May 2010 voted to approve a $48-per-term student fee to pay for construction of the building. However, state-backed bonds were needed to cover up-front costs.

Opsis officials were meeting with students in Corvallis the same week that the Legislature decided to defer approval of $40 million in bonds that included financing for the project.

“It was abrupt,” Meyer said. “We were going full-on when it stopped. It was tough.”

Many other projects that were depending on students fees were halted at the same time. Meyer said that legislators didn’t delay each project specifically, but rather applied a rule to all of them.

“It ties back into the Oregon University System bonds and how the state is backing those bonds,” Meyer said. “I think they couldn’t come to an agreement – ran out of time – and the easiest thing was a no from the folks in Salem.”

Andersen Construction was awarded the contract to serve as the general contractor for the project just a couple of months before it was halted, project manager Dustin Siebers said. The construction contract was worth more than $30 million and was a big deal for Andersen, he said.

“It was a surprise to us (and) I think it was a big surprise to Oregon State,” Siebers said. “We had to replan what we were going to do. We needed to look for work in the interim.”

Oregon University System spokeswoman Di Saunders said that the OUS will meet with university officials and legislators and then prioritize projects that had bond approvals deferred.

The OUS is set to submit a short list of high-priority projects to the Legislature’s Capital Construction Committee by Monday. The list will go before the committee at its meeting in November.

“The fiscal realities have affected the Legislature’s ability to approve all of the projects we had applied for in the last session,” Saunders said. “We need to review projects in light of that.”

The team planning the OSU student center was hit particularly hard by the delay because the project was so far along. A project to build a student recreation center at the University of Oregon was impacted less: associate Dave Guadagni said his firm is still working on the project’s expected time line.

“We’re doing fine,” Guadagni said. “We had always anticipated that design wouldn’t start until the user groups were on campus.”

Siebers and Meyer said that after engaging in some conversations with the OUS, they are optimistic – though without absolute certainty – that the Student Experience Center project will move forward next year.

“This is very uncommon, but we are now living in uncommon times,” Meyer said.

“When you’re working with state funding sources, nothing is ever certain,” Siebers said.

Meyer, whose firm seeks work in higher education, still has hope for the sector.

“I’m still positive that if we throw education down the drain, all bets are off,” Meyer said. “Civic projects have to be maintained.”

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