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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kaiser said he supports debt forgiveness for Black Americans.

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

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

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Cross-laminated timber is continuing to gain popularity in Portland, and one of the most visible hot spots is the intersection of North Williams Avenue and Fremont Street.

There, the eight-story Carbon 12 was completed in 2017. A stone’s throw away, the five-story Radiator building was finished in 2014. Now, work is under way on The Canyons – a six-story mixed-use building – next to Carbon 12. All three mass-timber projects were developed by Kaiser Group and designed by Path Architecture.

For The Canyons, R&H Construction is serving as the general contractor.

“Everybody’s excited about this project and what we’re doing,” R&H Construction Senior Project Manager Adam Petersen said.

Crews broke ground on The Canyons in February 2019 and expect to finish sometime this summer. The 65-foot-tall, 110,000-square-foot building will hold 70 residential units. Crafted with seniors in mind, the building will offer physically accessible amenities and light-filled apartments with open floor plans. As a bonus, a resident paramedic will be available 24 hours a day.

At present, teams of craft workers representing a host of trades are spread out across the site. All of them are working underneath a temporary weather barrier covering the entire building. The structure was topped out several months ago, when the final 5-ply and 7-ply CLT panels were flown in for installation.

“Right now the roof is going on as weather allows, the weather barrier is being applied and the first windows are on site and are starting to be installed,” Petersen said. “MEP teams are also roughing in units as fast as we can go, and we are a couple of weeks away from starting (insulation and drywall installation).”

As senior project manager, Petersen fields many of the inquiries about the use of CLT for The Canyons. The project will be featured at the 2020 International Mass Timber Conference in Portland in March.

“People are excited about it and we get asked about it, it seems like on every project,” Petersen said. “Everyone wants to know: ‘Is my project a good candidate for CLT?’ It can be tough trying to tell people that while it is a solution, and in some cases it is the best solution, it may not be the best solution for every project. It’s about trying to figure out the appropriate times and places to use it.”

For The Canyons, crews are building two post-tensioned concrete decks and four stories of stick-framed walls. But instead of common Trus Joist I Joists (TJIs) fabricated by Weyerhaeuser, the team is using CLT panels for floors and ceilings. Much of the wood and many of the mechanical systems are being left exposed.

“This is sort of a hybrid that not a lot of people have thought of,” Petersen said. “With steel and concrete buildings, everybody’s done it. But with CLT buildings, people are still being really creative about ‘Can we do it this way?’ and ‘What ways can we use to support this really great assembly?’”

The evolution of CLT in the building industry is ongoing, and the many variables involved are still being examined by project teams.

“You have to look at the whole development cost, I think,” Petersen said. “Breaking down materials, TJIs are less expensive than CLT. But when you start to factor in the (drywall) ceilings and some of the other things you’re putting in, the equation changes.”

Acoustics continue to be an issue, especially in multifamily projects, he added. The harder surface requires thicker acoustic matting and gypsum concrete assemblies, increasing the cost slightly.

“The science of it isn’t impossible to figure out,” he said. “Depending on the layout and configuration, it’s maybe cost neutral. Maybe it’s a value saver, but maybe it makes sense to do it in some other way.”

Then project teams must consider the fact that the few manufacturers of CLT panels all make products of different sizes. Clearly, there are still kinks to work out.

“It’s not simple,” Petersen said.

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Next to Carbon 12, an eight-story mass-timber mixed-use building in North Portland, the Kaiser Group and PATH Architecture are sticking with wood.

The Canyons, at the corner of North Williams Avenue and Ivy Street, will also feature cross-laminated timber (CLT). It will be six stories and offer market-rate apartments as well as substantial commercial space. But The Canyons won’t be a carbon copy.

“It’s a different type of structure,” said project architect Emily Dawson of PATH Architecture. “This is much more like a conventional multifamily project where we don’t have a post-and-beam structure like a lot of the CLT projects going on right now.”

R&H Construction is the general contractor for The Canyons. Crews broke ground in February on what will eventually be a 65-foot-tall building with 70 residential units. In total, there will be 110,000 square feet of floor space. It is designed for seniors, but there won’t be an age restriction. The team sought to offer physically accessible accommodations within a vibrant urban environment. Light-filled apartments will have open floor plans and modern designs. Plus, a resident paramedic will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Then there’s the unique open-air Alleywalk marketplace that will feature two separate buildings with several small businesses. These micro-retail spaces will range from 250 to 420 square feet.

Also, officials are working to establish partnerships with Legacy Health, New Seasons Market and others to help residents save on dining and health care costs.

The project is designed in part around the concept of intergenerational living. To that end, the team hopes to attract a Montessori school or a similar tenant.

On the design and engineering front, Dawson noted, there have been plenty of lessons learned from PATH Architecture’s experience with Carbon 12 to apply to The Canyons. While both buildings use CLT floor panels (fabricated by British Columbia-based Structurlam), there are more differences than similarities between them. Carbon 12, for instance, features a structural steel core, while The Canyons is being built more or less as a conventional building with a post-tensioned concrete podium.

One unique use of CLT panels in The Canyons will be in an interior atrium structure that links all five stories of apartments through the building’s open-air center. Zigzagging walkways on each floor will bounce from entryway to entryway along the length of the building. Those CLT walkways will be supported by other panels, but at skewed angles to form a never-before-seen load-bearing structure.

To obtain a final building permit, Dawson and her team had the walkway design tested by the Tallwood Design Institute at Oregon State University.

“Because they sit along each corridor wall, but sit at this kind of skewed angle, it creates what is called torsional shear through the panel,” Dawson said. “It’s shear moving through the panel in a way that we don’t have tested values that we can pull from charts.”

Under guidelines in Chapter 17 of the state building code, an exact copy of the atrium design was fabricated and sent to the Tallwood Design Institute lab for load-bearing tests. The results showed the design could bear at least three times its intended structural load – the lab ran out of weight to add after roughly 60,000 pounds.

“Our panels recovered to the level at which it passed the two-times test,” Dawson said. “Even when we took it to three times, we actually tried to break the panel but we couldn’t get it to failure.”

Crews from R2M2 Rebar & Stressing and Marion Construction are working below grade to construct the building’s underground parking structure, foundation and core.

“We are pouring structural concrete in the basement right now,” said Adam Peterson, senior project manager for R&H Construction. “Work on most of our foundations are complete. We are working on columns and walls, and right now we’re trending a little bit ahead of schedule. We will be in structural concrete through summer and starting wood framing in September and then the CLT will go up quite quickly.”

Cross-laminated timber offers multiple benefits, Dawson said.

“The first thing was the schedule advantages and ease of construction and lack of complications,” she said. “The second is the look; people just really love being in those spaces. It looks really beautiful and it feels so good to have that exposed wood. So, we see that as a differentiator on the market, and as a building owner it was really important to us.”

Completion is scheduled for fall 2020.

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The Portland Critical Mass Timber Meetup group is preparing to shine the spotlight on a couple of prominent projects in Portland. The Mass Timber Projects Showcase will look at The Canyons, by PATH Architecture, and Block 76, by Skylab Architecture.

The event is set for May 23, from 5 to 8 p.m., in room 2047 of the Meier & Frank Building at 555 S.W. Morrison St. Emily Dawson from PATH Architecture, Brad Nile from Andersen Construction and Jill Asselineau from Skylab Architecture will be on hand to speak about the projects and share information ranging from testing to project design, development, construction and more.

For security reasons, building doors will be locked after 6 p.m. Visitors will still have access, however, after checking in with security.

Block 76 will be a five-story (four above grade, one partially below grade), 23,202-square-foot mixed-use building featuring retail and office space. Cross-laminated timber will be used over a post-tensioned concrete foundation. Andersen Construction is the general contractor.

The Canyons, meanwhile, will be a six-story, 110,000-square-foot mixed-use building with 70 apartments. Cross-laminated timber will be used on the top five stories over a post-tensioned concrete podium. R&H Construction is the general contractor.

To RSVP or find out more, visit .

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PATH Architecture is expanding its use of cross-laminated timber to include a new senior living center at 3450 N. Williams Ave. When completed in 2019, The Canyons will be a 110,000-square-foot mixed-use structure next to developer’s Kaiser Group‘s Carbon 12.

“We have been working in mass-timber products for five years and we have learned a hell of a lot,” said Ben Kaiser, owner of PATH Architecture and Kaiser Group. “We keep moving the needle. We are pretty comfortable with CLT and how it works.”

One of the big advantages of using CLT in a senior living structure is that the panels help moderate moisture in the air.

In wintertime, the panels release moisture, which helps relieve dry air conditions that can hamper elderly residents’ breathing. Then in summertime, the panels absorb moisture.

The panels will include sensors able to detect exactly how much moisture they are absorbing or releasing.

“Studies have shown it’s a healthier environment,” Kaiser said. “The sensors will have a 13-year battery life. So for 13 years, we can read the moisture levels in the panels on an iPad. We will be able to see if there is a leak. That is fantastic to have in any building.”

The decision to use CLT as the primary construction material is one of the primary reasons for the $21 million price tag. Nevertheless, Kaiser sought to use an environmentally sustainable product.

“For me, at this point in my career, it’s about reversing the carbon footprint of construction,” he said. “I think the objective is to think beyond the immediate costs.”

Project developers have also added 10 units from the original plan formed two years ago.

“It has evolved,” said Jennifer Dillan, a spokeswoman with Kaiser Group. “One thing this project does is build on a series of unique partnerships.”

Those partnerships include one with New Seasons Market. Residents at The Canyons will be able to order from the market ready-made meals that can be delivered. A top goal of the project is to allow seniors to stay as independent as possible for as long as possible.

“This is not assisted-living level of care,” Kaiser said. “We designed an alley on the back of The Canyons. The elder folks will be able to go to an active retail corridor.”

This is Kaiser’s first foray into senior living structures. As such, he brought in Hoosiers Corporation as a partner. The Tokyo-based company has built numerous elder living structures in Japan. In return for sharing its expertise building elder housing, Hoosiers Corp. is getting firsthand experience using CLT, which is becoming more popular in Asia.

“They want to know about CLT and we want to learn about elder housing,” Kaiser said. “It’s a good match.”

The Canyons’ residential units will have a mid-price point, Kaiser said. A driving force in the effort to ensure costs wouldn’t be too high was the experiences he had with his own father.

“My siblings and I toured places,” Kaiser said. “The options for people who are not wealthy were not very good. They were all extremely expensive or so bad we would never put our parent there. We are trying to find a middle ground. We want to build something that is affordable but still a good place to live.”

R&H Construction has been chosen as the general contractor. Ground is expected to be broken in September and a grand opening is scheduled for December 2019.

On the Boards is a 91��Ƶ feature offering a look at the projects in Oregon being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact 91��Ƶ architecture and engineering reporter Kent Hohlfeld at 503-802-7224 or khohlfeld@djcOregon.com.

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At an Urban Land Institute resilience panel last month, architect Ben Kaiser told attendees that, at long last, a school had stepped up to serve as a test case for his patented seismic safety system, .

“The idea that a desk will protect you is ludicrous,” he said, knocking the American Red Cross-advised practice of dropping to the ground during an earthquake and seeking cover from falling material. “We’re adamant with CoreFirst: we protect the person.”

Kaiser, designer-builder-developer behind Portland’s , knows how to innovate – he’s pushed through tough projects where others have failed, like the all-timber Radiator Building and the topped-out, mass-timber Carbon12 condo tower (95 feet). A Midwest native, he grew up accustomed to tornado sirens and storm shelters. He’s passionate about his idea for an affordable partial seismic upgrade involving early detection and structurally-reinforced shelters inside schools. And now, after five years, Beaverton’s small, private (GIS) has put down $400,000 to install the first one.

“Beaverton always wants to be innovative,” Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle said.

But it’s not universal excitement. A number of people are unconvinced of the promise of CoreFirst. They include state and federal seismic officials, Portland-area public school districts and partners at some of the city’s top engineering firms. They say the system is a waste of money that distracts from real solutions. At worst, they say Kaiser is endangering the lives of children with his untested theories about earthquakes.

“I see no engineering advantage,” said Jay Raskin, vice chairman of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC). “This thing has not been vetted by the engineering community. He has an idea and he’s very persuasive about it, but he’s kind of off on his own with this. He has no support.”

Kool-Aid and opera

Doyle, for one, is on-board with CoreFirst. He wants GIS to be a seismic showcase for other Oregon schools. That the system is minimally-invasive, saves money and features seismic detection technology potentially beneficial to the greater community are all pluses for him. He said the system seemed “too practical, too affordable” to pass up.

With thousands of lives at stake and aging facilities throughout , public schools are on the front lines of discussions about resiliency. CoreFirst was created to upend what Kaiser considers out-of-date notions of school preparedness. He’s especially critical of the American Red Cross’ recommendation to “drop, cover and hold on” during an earthquake, because, he says, it’s only natural for people in mortal danger to seek safer ground.

There’s little dispute in engineering that a great need exists for seismic upgrades. Nearly 1,000 Oregon public school buildings have a seismic risk rated “high” or “very high” by the state geologist’s office. Plus, Portland is known to have an outsize number of buildings with hazardous, unreinforced masonry (URM), including around 300 multifamily structures and many public buildings.

Code now mandates full upgrades for certain at-risk structures. Owners can elect to bolster their properties, but due to the eye-popping price, most do so only when absolutely necessary. But CoreFirst, with an advertised cost of 25 percent of a full seismic upgrade, is meant to put resilience within reach for cash-strapped school districts and other owners.

A full seismic retrofit is often so invasive that owners must evict tenants or pay to relocate them, but CoreFirst seismic enclosures are designed to be quickly flown in from above. Also potentially attractive to schools: a build time of three months, or, one summer break.

According to Kaiser, the system consists of three elements working in concert:

1. In-ground early-detection sensors that warn schools of incoming quakes. (One of these systems is . Kaiser says it’s able to text seismic warnings to tenants.)
2. Kaiser’s deployed at strategic locations around a school. It’s to these “sanctuaries” that teachers are to muster their classes in the seconds after an earthquake’s initial rumblings.
3. Shored-up exits to prevent material from falling on fleeing people. (This is widely regarded by structural engineers as a good idea.)

Another CoreFirst believer is GIS Head of School Blake Peters. Following publication of Kathryn Schulz’s 2015 watershed article in The New Yorker about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest, Peters was inundated by worried parents. And he listened.

“Doing nothing wasn’t an answer,” he said.

Knowing a full upgrade was financially out of reach for the small school (200 students), Peters looked online for alternatives. He contacted Kaiser based on online materials.

“I’d already drank his Kool-Aid before he even tried to sell me anything,” Peters said, laughing.

Private schools pay for capital projects through reserves, bank financing and, of course, private donations. In this case, the fundraising campaign got a big assist from Kaiser himself, Peters said.

In late October, the school held an opera-themed fundraiser for a CoreFirst seismic upgrade in the Brewery Blocks. The event was a “huge success,” according to a , and reportedly exceeded its goal.

A week later, in , Doyle can be seen accepting Kaiser’s stamped design drawings at City Hall dressed for Halloween as Kylo Ren from “Star Wars.”

“We’re excited to be leading the way on innovative approaches to keeping children safe!” reads the post.

A static response

Raskin, a resiliency-focused architect from Cannon Beach, said it’s unfortunate the first CoreFirst school will be located in Beaverton – the Beaverton School District (BSD) has perhaps the strongest seismic resiliency program in the state. Its building specifications go beyond state mandates, and new buildings are expected to serve as community gathering places following a major emergency.

“It should be the plan for all schools in Oregon,” Raskin said.

CoreFirst, he said, should not.

Critics say, for one thing, that Kaiser’s comparisons of earthquakes to tornadoes miss the mark. Earthquakes are the sudden release of pent-up pressure along a geologic fault. And while detection technology has improved, they say there’s no reliable way to detect seismic emergencies fast enough to matter.

Kaiser started promoting his idea around the time Portland Public Schools (PPS) planned its previous bond program. With help from KPFF, he developed a conceptual plan to use his enclosures to strengthen schools in North Portland. But when his team applied for a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), it elicited a stark rebuke from FEMA’s head of Building Sciences, and PPS backed away.

That official, Edward Laatsch, sent a expressing “very significant concerns” with CoreFirst. For one, Laatsch said he knew of no technology capable of detecting earthquakes and issuing warnings the way Kaiser describes. Further, Laatsch said Portland is threatened by a number of geologic faults smaller than the well-known Cascadia Subduction Zone, and Kaiser’s system doesn’t seem to account for them.

“The CoreFirst system … is significantly flawed and it is very doubtful that this system would meet the technical feasibility criteria for FEMA mitigation grant funding,” Laatsch wrote.

Seismic experts, including Laatsch, worry that once a CoreFirst system is installed, districts might sit back, believing their problem fixed. Experts wonder why, in the case of GIS, a seismic system is needed so urgently in a two-story, wood-framed building (the nearly 50-year-old structure was built as an administrative space for Phil Knight’s Nike-precursor Blue Ribbon Sports).

Structural engineer Jeffrey Soulages, an Intel employee, echoed a common critique: “What this approach does is provide a false sense of security.”

Kaiser insists his plan works. Beyond that, he said, a small step is better than nothing.

“A static response will get a static outcome,” he says.

Support system

Kaiser thinks the discussion over CoreFirst has gotten “political.” He’s frustrated with FEMA, which he says is “not cutting-edge at all,” citing its botched handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Additionally, FEMA has been unresponsive to Kaiser’s outreach. He said he’s called Laatsch more than 10 times “to no avail.”

“I think he took about 15 minutes and then he wrote that response,” he said of Laatsch’s letter, which PPS and BSD officials told the 91��Ƶ was a reason they’ve avoided Kaiser’s system.

“I have begged FEMA to have a real discourse about this,” he said. “It really confuses me.”

One man whose opposition he’s especially “confused” by is Blake Patsy, head of KPFF, the largest structural engineering firm in Portland. Kaiser describes a productive rap session near CoreFirst’s inception, when the two met for coffee and Patsy helped Kaiser “create” CoreFirst.

Patsy tells it different. He said he was initially interested when Kaiser came to him for support, but only if CoreFirst concepts were included as part of a larger, phased seismic upgrade plan. KPFF did assist on a conceptual plan for PPS, he says, but declined further involvement when it became clear Kaiser was interested only in “selling his product.”

“He’s basically a salesman,” Patsy said. “He wants to sell his product, and that doesn’t align with our engineering philosophy of doing what’s right for the project and the client.”

Patsy said Kaiser brought to their meeting a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for him to sign, indicating to him that Kaiser was after his endorsement, not his input.

“You don’t bring an NDA if it’s not your idea,” Patsy said.

But the “line in the sand” for Patsy was when he read Kaiser quoted in a 2013 91��Ƶ article calling KPFF a partner in CoreFirst. After that, he told Kaiser, “we’re done.”

“If you have to read about what’s going on with your partner in the paper, that’s not a partner,” Patsy said.

KPFF is not alone in asking Kaiser to cease using its name in connection with CoreFirst. His prospective steel supplier for the GIS project, Pleasanton, California-based , has done the same.

“We told him flat-out, we stand behind our product 100-percent, but we don’t get into the end application,” said Jeremy Gilstrap, Simpson Strong-Tie’s vice president of engineering. “We are not in a position to support what he’s doing.”

Amit Kumar, senior structural engineer with the city of Portland, has heard Kaiser’s pitch several times, once when Kaiser approached the city about joining him. Kumar said he feels compelled to warn parents that while CoreFirst might improve a school building, it is not a seismic upgrade.

“We have told him that he cannot use the city of Portland to sell his product in any of his propaganda,” Kumar said.

Kaiser still touts the endorsements of local structural engineering firm Nishkian Dean, as well as Art Johnson, the retired founder of KPFF and, incidentally, Patsy’s father-in-law.

Johnson and Nishkian Dean Vice President Edwin T. Dean in 2013 defended two aspects of CoreFirst in a , writing that there is merit in the notion of incremental seismic strengthening, and that examples of predictive seismic monitoring do exist.

“CoreFirst is a new approach to looking at a big challenge that we have long faced,” they wrote.

Creeped out

The latest on the GIS CoreFirst upgrade is that it’s still up in the air. On Wednesday, days before work was to start, Peters learned the cost had doubled to around $800,000. He said he was told by Kaiser it was the result of rising labor and material costs and price creep transferred through their chosen contractor, R&H Construction.

“Nobody knows with this new technology, so the cost keeps creeping,” Peters said.

R&H directed all questions to Kaiser.

A building permit with the city of Beaverton is still valid, and Peters said work will get done when the funding is in place, if not this summer, then next.

“Everyone is probably going to have to dig into their pockets a little deeper,” he said. “We will do this project.”

Frustrated with the pushback his idea has received, Kaiser admits he set out thinking, optimistically, that CoreFirst would “just get adopted.”

“The logic seemed so straightforward to me,” he said. “Perhaps that was illogical on my part.”

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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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“You’re standing on the tallest wood building in the United States,” said Ben Kaiser on top of his Carbon12 at North Williams Avenue and Northeast Fremont Street.

For the moment, he’s right. It’s also the first residential use of timber framing at its height in the U.S.

At 95 feet and eight stories, Carbon12 is a shade taller than architect ; the Minneapolis structure held the distinction for only a few months.

T3 and Carbon12 both employ mass timber in their structural systems – T3 with nail- and glue-laminated timber and Carbon12 with a hybrid of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and a steel core. Both were asked to compete in the USDA’s , though neither won. A different Portland wood skyscraper, the Framework tower, ended up splitting the $3 million prize with a now-scrapped New York City project.

The design competition, backed by the Obama administration, evidently helped invigorate the race to erect so-called wood skyscrapers in the U.S., a contest Portland is well-positioned to dominate.

Building codes in the U.S. for more than a century have discouraged use of wood framing in structures taller than five stories because of life safety concerns. CLT, however, especially in concert with other forms of mass timber, have the potential to change this. They’ve already been in use elsewhere – notably Europe and Canada – since the 1990s.

PATH forward

Kaiser, head of development firm Kaiser Group and design-build firm PATH Architecture, to many people represents the human face of gentrification in rapidly changing Northeast Portland. Heavy on sustainable features, PATH projects are described as the epitome of green building methods, sleek design and low environmental impact.

Kaiser wants Carbon12 to be a continuation – visually and thematically – of his One North mixed-use office project kitty-corner across the street. (The other half of the Carbon12 lot is planned to contain a 65-unit aging-in-place concept called The Canyons.)

The CLT panels were delivered to the site in 22 flatbed trucks with brackets and other attachments already installed, meaning the panels only had to be fitted into place with the tower crane. The crane itself was only on-site for two and a half months.

Carbon12 will have two units per floor. Recesses in the east and west sides of the building will have ivy running up them, as high as it will grow. Kaiser, a registered architect, was inspired by the concept of a “nurse log” – a fallen tree that then nurtures other life.

“Once a tree falls, it’s only lived about half its life,” he said. “It gives those nutrients to the next generations. It’s a fantastic way to think about architecture, especially at this moment with the advent of CLT.”

Though the building flaunts its wood, it actually employs all of the big three building materials. Steel is used in the core and braces that connect floor plates to the vertical columns. And concrete is used on the basement, ground floor and garage. (The automated garage represents another first for the U.S. The German-designed underground system will deliver drivers their vehicles without them ever needing to venture below-ground.)

Kaiser said it’s wrong to think of building materials in competitive terms, as some unions and industry groups have done.

“I really think everyone should just relax and let the products perform where they perform best,” he said. “There’s plenty of market for everybody, and I think that we all need to work together to make each other better, rather than trying to out-prove one another,” he said.

Kaiser received an undisclosed amount from the Softwood Lumber Board to help test aspects of his project. He said he and his firm will only build with mass timber from now on. He thinks one day the skyline of Portland will be dominated by wood.

“This is our way forward, and we’ll keep applying what we’ve learned,” he said.

Knocks on wood

The Framework team plans to celebrate the award of building permits from the state and the city later this month. But it has already notched many milestones. The project has won design review approval, and concept testing – fire, acoustic, seismic – has been carried out at laboratories around the country.

The team now is looking ahead to a 14-month construction schedule, starting in late summer.

“The piece we’re looking at now is the financing,” said Anyeley Hallova, a principal with project^. “It’s a complex project of affordable housing in it, market-rate office. It will take a little while now to put that all together.”

But Framework’s East Coast counterpart hasn’t had the same good fortune.

The ownership group split several months ago when it became clear the New York Fire Department remains reluctant to adopt mass-timber performance, according to sources close to the project. And the New York Building Department is still following the 2012 International Building Code, not the 2015 one, which is said to be more favorable to CLT.

“They’ve been reluctant to engage with developers who are willing to do performance-based approval,” said Jeff Spiritos, principal of Spiritos Properties. He said his business has moved on to working on other timber-based projects in cities more inclined to support them.

The Northeast is historically fire-conservative. It’s also the cradle of the U.S. steel industry, which, along with concrete, masonry and union concerns are hitting back against CLT proponents angling for market share. The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association last year started the “Build with Strength” public relations campaign to promote steel and concrete and warn against wider use of mass timber products.

One recent email blast about a failed attempt to allow some wood-framing in Florida school construction was headed, “Florida Building Commission Stands Strong for Students.”

Ethan Martin is an engineer serving as technical director of WoodWorks, a campaign of the Wood Products Council to promote mass-timber products. He said the steel and concrete industries lobbied in the 1950s and 1960s to get those products more widely used.

“At this point, they literally have 100-percent market share of anything over five stories. So even if there are only 10 buildings a year built using CLT, that’s going to cut into their market share,” Martin said.

Andrew Waugh, a prominent British CLT proponent, estimates that in Europe, where CLT has been in use since the 1990s, the product represents about 0.5 percent of building materials used in buildings taller than five stories.

Getting the code changed to allow CLT is important, but Greg Kingsley, head of KL&A Structural Engineers and Builders in Denver says that more critical to CLT’s success right now are the local building officials.

Portland officials have made allowances for the use of alternative materials in high-rises. KL&A’s Platte 15 CLT concept was originally planned to be 15 stories, but Kingsley said it was bumped down to five to satisfy the Denver Building Department, which wasn’t willing to make an exception.

“Maybe in the Pacific Northwest, the forest industry is closer to your hearts; in Denver – maybe not so much,” he said. “Look, don’t blame the building officials. They’re just doing their job. They’re waiting for the proof … You should be proud your local building officials in Portland are innovative enough to want to be on the bleeding edge of this.”

CLT isn’t cheap, but can be made due to the speed of construction. Developer Farid Bolouri is hoping to achieve feasibility this way in St. Johns, where residents often are hostile toward intrusive developments. Alan Jones is designing a dense four-story apartment building on a small, centrally located lot. Cutting down on construction impacts is key to project success, Jones said.

“I’ve been watching (Carbon12) go up. I said, I think we can go faster,” he said.

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