Tucked next to a park and other corporate offices in Hillsboro, a structure touted as the largest cross-laminated timber building in the United States is gaining occupants.

First Tech Federal Credit Union is in the process of moving 650 employees from its former office in Beaverton and short-term leased space in Hillsboro to its new 156,000-square-foot building that integrates wood, glass and steel.

The building is First Tech’s base of operations in Oregon, where it serves clients such as Intel, Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon and Tektronix. The credit union’s headquarters is in Mountain View, California.

The five-story building has cross-laminated timber from Structurlam, a manufacturer based in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada. The CLT was stamped and readied off-site. It was then assembled into place – in a process not unlike stacking Lincoln Logs – by general contractor Swinerton Inc.

The CLT is complemented by glass, flat steel panels and mirrored steel panels. The effect is a warm, modern building that’s more horizontal than vertical as it cuts across the site.

“The idea was not to make a building that is next to the park, but a building that is the park,” said Scott Barton-Smith, project architect with Hacker.

Each floor has floor-to-ceiling windows that let in natural light. An in-floor HVAC system reduces the need for clutter on the ceiling, allowing the CLT panels to show.

“They wanted to create a distinctive workplace that helps them attract and retain the best staff,” Barton-Smith said. “Wood is one way of doing that.”

Using CLT tightened the construction timeline, said Monique Little, First Tech’s chief people and administrative officer.

Swinerton broke ground in May 2017 and finished the project in 15 months.

“It was a pretty aggressive timeline, which was why CLT was advantageous for us,” Little said.

Hacker and First Tech began discussing CLT early in the project timeline, Barton-Smith said.

“It just became clear in early phases of programming that mass timber would be a particularly good fit for their institution,” he said.

Little declined to provide the project’s cost, but she said work was completed on schedule and under budget. Using CLT saved an estimated 4 percent compared to a comparable steel structure, she said. First Tech self-financed the project.

The project did not use CLT from D.R. Johnson, a Riddle-based firm that supplied material that delaminated in March at an Oregon State University project site. D.R. Johnson’s CLT has been touted as a potential economic engine for Oregon.

Structurlam buys wood on the open market, and Barton-Smith said he saw pallets of Oregon wood products being used when he visited Structurlam’s facility.

“The CLT makes such a beautiful finish,” he said. “It’s a particularly elegant material because it does many things: It is a structural deck. It is its own fireproofing. And it’s a beautiful material.”

The project team believes the First Tech building is the largest CLT building in the United States. There are larger mass timber buildings in the U.S., but not one with CLT. However, there are some larger CLT projects in Canada, including the Brock Commons building at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Use of CLT required installation of sound-deadening panels in some areas. CLT projects need special attention paid to acoustics, Barton-Smith said.

Both the office building and the parking garage have bike parking for employees. The office building also has showers and locker rooms.

Last week, workers were putting up a First Tech sign in the lobby. Employees worked at their desks, save for a pair playing pingpong.

First Tech chose the site after a long search. The financial institution was dedicated to staying in the West Portland metro area, Little said.

“Being on the west side is important to us,” she said. “That’s where our members live. That’s where they work. That’s where our partner companies are.”

First Tech is building a five-floor parking garage on the other side of the 17-acre campus. In between is an open area, which was being graded last week to accommodate grass. That area is expected to be the eventual home of a second office building as First Tech expands. The first building has capacity for up to 900 employees. The site also has a large surface parking lot.

“The vision is we’ll have a sister building,” Little said.

Visit /news/2018/09/04/photos-inside-first-techs-new-clt-office-building/ to view more photos of the building.

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