Ball Corporation, Timberlab, ATI and Gordon Truck Centers are pouring a combined $500 million, at least, to build manufacturing plants and other facilities in Millersburg.

That’s the kind of economic development any city would love. Large employers bring jobs and an expanded tax base, among other benefits.

In a city of 3,000-plus like Millersburg, slightly north of Albany, those numbers make a major impact.

While some governments get “caught up in red tape and rule books” that make development difficult, Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist said, Millersburg city leaders welcome businesses.

“How can we get to yes for you on this?” Nyquist said.

Millersburg’s low taxes, large tracts of developable land and easy access to Interstate 5 and rail service have made it popular for businesses. Few cities along Oregon’s predominant north-south freeway have experienced Millersburg’s level of industrial growth.

“What the difference is that attitude is from our council,” former City Manager Kevin Kreitman said. “I will tell you that historically Millersburg has always had a council that understands the value of the industrial base and protecting that industrial base and growing that base for the benefit of the community.”

Impetus for incorporation

The town was established as Millers Station in 1871, when a rail station was built for the Southern Pacific Railroad. It became a large shipping point for cattle in the 1880s and renamed Millersburg around 1900.

The U.S. Bureau of Mines established a facility to produce zirconium there in the 1940s. That plant was later sold to Wah Chang for production of metals including hafnium, tantalum and niobium. In the 1980s, it became a Superfund site; the environmental cleanup took 20 years.

In 1952, the Willamette Kraft Corporation built a paper mill to process wood chips into kraft paper. When it was owned by Weyerhaeuser, the plant was known for a smell reminiscent of rotting cabbage that greeted people driving by it on I-5.

“That was the smell of money, man,” Nyquist said.

Millersburg incorporated as a city in 1974, partially so businesses and residents could avoid being annexed into Albany and pay that city’s higher property taxes.

About a third of the city’s land was designated for residential development, which left lots of room for commercial growth.

A substantial hole to fill

The paper mill closed for good in 2009 and cost 270 workers their jobs. Three years later, the mill’s owner, then International Paper, tore it down.

At the time of its closure, the mill’s property tax bill was about $2.6 million annually — the most in Linn County.

“We lost a lot of jobs,” Millersburg Mayor Scott Cowan said. “And so that was a big impact, and then of course as that sort of was the immediate situation once that news got out was of course the financial impact to the city was by the franchise fees and taxes from the IP property. We felt that.”

The loss of that revenue was significant to the taxing districts — officials had to find ways to replace the revenue to pay for city services and road repairs, for example.

Millersburg didn’t levy property tax for its first 40 years because the city earned enough money from franchise fees to pay for basic city services. Now the city charges the maximum $3.50 per $1,000 of assessed value. Most of that goes to contracted fire and sheriff’s services.

The city tried to attract businesses to fill the gap left by International Paper.

In 2008, Peak Sun Silicon broke ground on a 10,000-square-foot building where it would employ 500 people to produce an ingredient in solar cells. The state foreclosed on the property when Peak Sun defaulted on a $14 million loan in 2012.

In 2019, the state gave Linn County $25 million to build an intermodal facility on a portion of the former International Paper property. That project cost $35 million, but operations never began.

Renewed interest in development

When Timberlab was looking to build a new facility to manufacture mass timber, the company considered multiple Willamette Valley locations, including Independence and Corvallis, President Chris Evans said.

Then Timberlab found a 33.5-acre site in Millersburg. The location had challenges. It had a fish bearing stream, needed an entry road and the main connecting road to Old Salem Highway was under construction.

Nevertheless, Timberlab purchased the land from the city and expects to complete its first building this year. That project will bring an estimated 100 jobs to Millersburg.

Gov. Tina Kotek, present when ground was broken in March 2025, said Oregon is “leading the way” in mass timber and pointed to the new roof at the Portland International Airport terminal.

“The city really facilitated taking a lot of the issues out of the sites here, so they could invite somebody into the community and have a quicker turnaround to have something rezoned from agricultural to industrial,” Evans said at the ground-breaking event.

That will include a 185,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. Timberlab has plans for 85,000-square-foot and 126,000-square-foot buildings in the future.

Companies that build in Millersburg reap the same tax rewards as its citizens.

Property owners in Millersburg pay a combined tax rate of 15.61 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, one of the lowest rates in the state for a city that offers the services that Millersburg does.

A company building a $100 million facility can save over $1 million per year on property taxes compared to other cities if it builds in Millersburg.

The money brought in from taxes and fees also means residents don’t have to worry about being barraged with bonds and levies from the city.

“But don’t worry,” city manager Janelle Booth said. “Our residents still complain about our taxes.”

Companies like Timberlab also get a tax break by building in enterprise zones — areas designated for large-scale industrial development by the state.

Enterprise zone projects must meet requirements including a minimum investment cost and employee count. Also, workers must be paid between 130 and 150 percent of the county’s average wage.

Businesses are exempt from paying property taxes on capital improvements for three to five years. In a rural enterprise zone, such as the one in Millersburg, businesses could be exempt from paying taxes on those improvements for up to 15 years.

In the meantime, the city will still benefit from the Timberlab development as it collects franchise fees from the company. Millersburg received nearly $1.2 million per year from Pacific Power last year, and that will go up with more power being used by Timberlab and Ball Corporation.

That money pays for basic city services like roads, parks and city administration.

“We’re looking at it for that long-term benefit, too,” Booth said.

The value of incentives

Millersburg has invested heavily in infrastructure that benefits residents and businesses. The city shares water filtration and wastewater treatment facilities with Albany.

Pacific Power owns and runs a regional operations center in the southern part of the city.

Millersburg city leaders convinced Pacific Power to build a new substation on Conser Road across the street from the Jefferson Fire Department station in 2024. That provides large industrial users with plenty of electricity for whatever they plan to build.

Several large parcels inside the city limits were zoned industrial and never developed. Over the years, Millersburg acquired several of those parcels for free or close to it.

To spur economic development, the city took an active approach in marketing the industrial properties.

The city updated its comprehensive plan in 2020, which essentially served as a sales brochure for prospective development.

“That’s an incentive that we can have with the industries to encourage them to come in,” Kreitman said. “We went through and we put together a presentation, and the state asked us to come and talk about it for other communities to look at. It’s really helped us.”

The city council opted to be selective in which companies it would sell properties to. For example, the city chose not to sell land for warehouses that employ few people.

“As the property owner, the price of the property is one of our tools to get what we want in here,” Booth said.

The city still owns about 70 acres of flat, undeveloped land that is zoned for industrial use.

Dormant site could be awakened

Cowan said Ball Corporation’s plans to build a plant helped spur much of the new economic development in the city.

“We heard about another company that was interested, but it was a lot of this loose interest and no one really serious until Ball came along,” Cowan said. “That really was a big one.”

Ball Corporation’s facility could be larger than 500,000 square feet when it’s finished, according to city planning documents, but will be smaller to start, Kreitman said.

It is unclear how many jobs the Ball facility will provide once it’s finished. The company did not respond to requests for comments.

Center Market is planning a new 5,200-square-foot building for its store and offices. Pure Energy is adding a 7,480-square-foot building.

Several businesses have announced plans for the former International Paper property.

Aymium, formerly known as National Carbon Technologies, in 2022 signed a 16-year lease for construction of a plant that uses carbon products to produce things like filters. Linn County approved a pause in that lease in 2025.

“And if they don’t go forward, we’ve got, guess what, flat land available at a reasonable price in close proximity to I-5 and rail,” Nyquist said.

In 2024, Omni Energy agreed to lease the site to transfer biodiesel from trains to trucks. That still hasn’t happened.

“It’s going to take some infrastructure investment,” Nyquist said. “The operators want to work out a longer-term lease to justify that investment, and so that’s what we’re working on today.”

Corvallis-based Samaritan Health Services owns a 2.3-acre plot in the north part of the city at the intersection of Old Salem Highway and the I-5 interchange. The nonprofit planned to build a regional medical center when it purchased the property for $1 million, according to city documents.

“While we do not have definitive plans for that property at this time, we do consider it a very important asset that can help us meet community health needs as Millersburg and surrounding areas continue to grow,” stated Larissa Balzer, Samaritan Health Services vice president of strategy and planning.

Hoping for a downtown and more

While Millersburg has a lot of industrial development, it lacks commercial businesses. Humpty’s Dump Bar & Grill and Oregon Barbecue Company are among the few commercial properties in town.

The Love’s Travel Stop that opened in 2018 near the North Millersburg exit is the city’s most recent commercial development.

The city owns about 8 acres along Old Salem Highway between the new fire station, which the city built for $5 million in 2023, and Center Market. The site is designated for commercial development.

Unlike many small Oregon cities, Millersburg doesn’t have a downtown.

“We’re hoping to create one,” Booth said.

The city also lacks affordable housing. The only houses for sale in Millersburg are listed for over $500,000. There are no apartments or multifamily housing.

“That is the constant feedback we hear from our community and our council and our planning commission, 10,000-square-foot lots is the hill to die on for our folks,” Booth said.

Significant housing growth occurred in the city until 2023, when construction advanced on the last parcel of developable land within city limits. City leaders say they can’t expand the urban growth boundary to the north or west because of the prime farmland in those areas.

The city is looking to expand east of I-5 at a long-hoped-for new interchange for more commercial and high-density residential growth.

Millersburg also owns land it intends to use for a YMCA building and a school, something the city hasn’t had since the last one closed in 1983.

“Last we knew, they are very interested in getting something in here,” Booth said.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Statesman Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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Project name: PDX Terminal Core Redevelopment Phase 1

Location: Portland

Completion: August 2024

Size: 1 million-square-foot expansion

Cost: $1,747,035,116

Owner/Developer: Port of Portland

Architect: ZGF Architects

Engineers: KPFF

General Contractor: Hoffman Construction Co. of Oregon and Skanska USA Joint Venture

Submitting Companies: Hoffman Construction and Western Partitions Inc.

Subcontractors: Hoffman/Skanska: AAI Engineering – Afghan Associates, Ackerman Plumbing, Adams Consulting & Engineering, ADCOMM Engineering, Advanced Tribal, AIG, AirSide Solutions, Alcantar & Associates, Allegion, Allen Construction Management Services, Alliance Industrial Group, Ambrose Glass, American Direct, American Plumbing & Heating, Anderson Environmental Contracting, Angle Detailing, Anning Johnson, Apex Environmental Consulting, Apply-A-Line, Arctic Sheet Metal, Armadillo Underground, Arrow Timber Framing, Art Cortez Construction, ARUP, Aspen Ridge Electric, Authority Dock & Door, Autodesk, Automatic Systems, Avvir, Azuri Construction, B&L Wood Creations, Bantam’s Plumbing, Basic Fire Protection, Baxter Air Engineering, Bello Global Consulting, Belsinger Sign Works, Benson Permasteelisa, Big C Industries, Big Floors, BIM Connection, Black Line Glazing, Blackmouth Design, BNP Associates, Boingo Wireless, Boyter Brothers Insulation, BrandSafway, Briggs Engineering, Buffalo Welding, Building Champions, Building Material Specialties, BuildWise, Bulldog Mechanical & Remodeling, Burns & McDonnell, CalPortland, Campbell’s Concrete, Carey & Walsh, Carleton Hart Architecture, Carpinteria, Carvart, Casewerks, Cash’s Drapery, Cherry City, CIDA, City of Portland, COAT Flagging, Cochran, Coffman Excavation, Columbia Steel Services, Columbia Wire & Iron Works, Colvico, Communication Technology Services, Concrete GPR, Condon-Johnson & Associates, Constrafor, Contract Décor, Convergint Technologies, CoreBrace, Corradini, Cosco Fire Protection, Crossfire Sprinkler Company, CTL Engineering, Culver Glass, Cumming Group, Curtis Restaurant Equipment, Custom Source Woodworking, Daifuku Airport America, DBC Architecture, DBM Vircon, DeaMor Associates, Derr and Gruenewald Construction, DeWitt Construction, Diamond Specialties, Digital Works Production, Diverse Works, Diversified Heavy Lift, Dormakaba USA, Dowco, Downing Diversified, Draft Doctor, Drywall, Elcon Associates, Elite Terminal Services, ELK Collective, Elk Ridge Services, Engineered Products, Faison Construction, Faster Permits, Faustrollean Fixture, FD Thomas, FDT Structural Secialties, Fisher Marantz Stone, Floor Factors, Floor Solutions, Flynn BEC LP, GBA Architectural Products + Services, Geotechnical Resources, GEW, Gibson Door & Millwork, GNB Global, Greenberry Industrial, GTS Construction Consulting, Ha’s Painting, Halliday Associates, Hanset Stainless, Harder Mechanical Contractors, Harris Rebar, HEA, Hermanson, Hicks Striping & Curbing, Hilti, HLB Lighting Design, HNTB, Hoffman Layout & Modeling, Hoffman Structures, Howard Jacobs Masonry, Hughey and Phillips, I&H Construction, i-TEN Associates, Icon 3D Signs & Flair Plastic Products, IES Communications, Imperial Brown, Insulpro, Integrated Construction Enterprises, Integrated Systems Group, Intelligent Systems Now, Interface Engineering, Interior Exterior Specialist, Interior Technology, Intertek-PSI, Iris Window Coverings, ISAT, ISEC, ISG, J.A. Watts, Jacobs, Jacobsen/Daniels Assoc., Jet City Laser, JH Kelly, John Bean Technologies, Johnson Controls, JRT Mechanical, Just Right Heating & Cooling, K & D Window Shades, K2 Construction Consultants, K2 Security Consulting, Keller North America, Key Construction Services, Key Electrical Construction, Klinger Masonry, Kodiak Pacific Construction, KSL, KTA-Tator, Landscape Forms, Leading Edge Installations, LeanProject, Legend Custom Woodworking, Levolux Limited, Lisin Metallurgical Services, Luma Lighting Design, M&H Metal Works, Mackenzie, Madlyn Metal Fab, Mammoet, Marc Bowen Productions, Mardan Fabrication, Mayer Reed, Mayes Testing Engineers, McDonald Excavating, McKinstry, Mecho Shade, Menzies Aviation, Michigan, Midion, MiTek (Benson), MK Fall Protection, MM Systems, Mobile Mini, Multivista, MWA Architects, NBZ Consulting Engineers, NDE Professionals, Ness & Campbell Crane, Newlands & Co., Norkote of Washington, Norse Ironworks, North Star Industries, NorthStar CG, NorthStar Demolition and Remediation, Northstar Industries, Northwest Handling Systems, Northwest Precast, Novum Structures, NW Draft Technicians, OEG, OLA Consulting Engineers, O’Neill Construction Group, O’Neill Electric, Oregon Door Consultants, Oregon Specialty Systems, Organon Group, Oshkosh Aerotech, Overhead Door, Pacific Mobile Structures, Pacific Window Tinting, PAE Engineers, Palmer Engineering Company, Paragon Risk Engineering, PB Steel Detailing, Penhall, Performance Contracting, Performance Systems Integration, Phit Too, Pinnacle Infotech, Pioneer Waterproofing, PipeTech Support c/o Peninsular Technologies, Pitman Restaurant Equipment, PLACE Studio, Polygon US, Portland Airlines Consortium, Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland Dock & Door, Portland State University, Practical Integrated Designs, Pratt + Larson, Precision Construction Company, Prestige Tile & Stone, Procore Technologies, Professional Lath and Plaster, Professional Roof Consultants, Professional Service Industries, Publix Northwest, Pure Floors, QED Lab, QSEC Steel Detailing, R2M2 Rebar & Stressing, Raben QMS, Ramsay Signs, RDH Building Science, Re:Source New Jersey, Rentokil North America, Resolute Construction, RIEDESIGNS, River City Environmental, RIXIR Systems, RJ Ramos Enterprises, Roger Langeliers Construction, Romtec, RS&H, RStart, Rubenstein’s Contract Carpet, Rytec, Safe Solutions AS, Safeguard US, SAIF, SBC Global, Schuff Steel, SecureInsights, Service Master Building Services, Service Master Clean of Seattle, Sigma Associates, Sigma Engineering Solutions, Sign Wizards, Simpson & Associates, Skyline Construction Services, Sky-Shots Aerial Photography, Smartvid.io, Snyder Roofing & Sheet Metal, Soil Freeze, Southland Industries, Sowles, Specialized Pavement Marking, Specialty Firestop Systems, Stanley – Security, Sterling Floors, Sterling Pacific, Stoncor Group, Stonewood Structural Engineers, Straight Up Carpentry, Streimer Sheet Metal Works, Stryker, Studio Petretti Architecture, Summit Wood Creations, SunSteel, Superfab, Swinerton, Technical Waterproofing, Techsource Enterprises, Terracon Consultants, The Greenbusch Group, Thompson Metal Fab, ThyssenKrupp Elevator, Timberlab, TMC, Top End Terrazzo, Town & Country Fence, TrailB Technologies, Turtle Mountain Construction, Vaagen Timbers, Valar Engineering, Valgreen Painting, Valmont Telecommunications, Vaughn Environmental, VTC, W&W-AFCO Steel, Walter P Moore, Weil Architecture, Wessco, Western Partitions, Western Rebar, Western Tile & Marble, Western Wood Structures, Westlake Consultants, Whole Building Solutions, Williams 3T Contracting, Willscot Mobile Mini, Williamsen & Bleid, WSP, Zana Construction, Zena Forest Products. Western Partition subcontractors: AllSource Construction Supply, CWallA, Freres, L&W, Lindner, Lively Trucking, Meltar Supply, Professional Lathe and Plaster, Rigidized, SkyAcoustics, Viking Engineering and Construction

A massive wooden roof spanning 9 acres now crowns Portland International Airport, the result of groundbreaking construction techniques that allowed the busy transportation hub to remain fully operational throughout its major renovation.

The Hoffman-Skanska joint venture and its teams completed the installation using an unprecedented prefabrication strategy that prevented disruption to the 50,000 daily passengers while meeting the Port of Portland’s stringent seismic resiliency requirements.

Serving millions of travelers each year, PDX could not afford the widespread closures that on-site roof construction would have required. To solve this challenge, construction teams built the entire roof structure off-site in 20 massive sections called “cassettes,” each containing approximately 120 individual components including skylights, insulation and mechanical systems. The largest cassette measured 220 feet by 110 feet. The construction required a 20-acre staging area near the airport’s fire department headquarters, featuring a reinforced concrete pad engineered to support the weight of the roof modules during assembly.

In a first-of-its-kind sustainability initiative for a project of this scale, all timber was sourced from 13 sustainably managed forests in Oregon and Washington. The project team established a comprehensive tracking system to ensure wood could be traced from “forest to frame.”

Timberlab was instrumental in advancing wood innovation at PDX, supporting the development of the signature 400,000-squaer-foot roof. Timberlab and Hoffman-Skanska selected local firms such as Zip-O and Freres Lumber to fabricate key structural components.

Special consideration was given to seismic resilience, with the roof and curtain wall system designed to move up to 24 inches in any direction during an earthquake. This movement is made possible by seismic base isolation bearings that support the roof structure.

In another innovative move, workers repurposed a connector between concourses that was slated for demolition, transforming it into a pedestrian bridge bypass. This creative reuse prevented 3.4 million pounds of material from entering landfills.

The project is LEED Gold certified.

Minority- and women-owned businesses’ participation on the overall project ranged between 22 percent and 25 percent.

Subcontractor Western Partitions played a key role on the project. Its scope – totaling $19.5 million and involving 400,000 square feet of space – included exterior and interior metal framed walls, interior soffits and ceilings, insulation, drywall, taping, stadium seating framing, and mass plywood panels atop the concessions spaces and airline offices. The company spent approximately 20 percent of its contract on partnerships with MWESB subcontractors and suppliers.

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Project name: Multnomah County Holgate LibraryLocation: Portland

Completion: April 2025

Size: 21,000 square feet

Cost: $17,590,743

Owner: Multnomah County

Architect: Bora Architecture & Interiors

Interior Designer: Bora Architecture & Interiors

Engineers: Equilibrium Engineers, Arris Consulting, Samata Consulting Engineers, Vega Civil Engineering

General Contractor: Swinerton

Submitting Company: Swinerton

Other Associates/Consultants: Colloqate Design, Elevate Building Commissioning, O-LLC Lighting Design, PLACE (landscape architecture), Timberlab

Subcontractors: A&R Solar, Andres Landscape, Apollo Mechanical Contractors, Berrien Concrete, Building Material Specialties, Castle Masonry & Restoration, Code Unlimited, Cosco Fire Protection, Custom Designed Skylights, Dennis’ Seven Dees Landscaping, Don Frank Flooring, Figure Plant, General Sheet metal Works, Hyphn, Interior Technology, Interlaken, J.S. Perrott & Co., Kodiak Pacific Construction, KONE, Lensa Consulting, Madlyn Metal Fab, Mill Plain Electric, Norse Ironworks, NW Umpqua Roofing & Waterproofing, Oregon Door Consultants, PBS Engineering & Environmental, Pioneer Waterproofing, Portland Coatings dba Williamsen & Bleid, Prestige Tile & Stone, Qualified Enclosure Consultants, Shiels Obletz Johnsen, Sign Wizards, Skyline sheet Metal, South Town Glass, T. Gerding Construction, Techsource Enterprises, The Grenebusch Group, Ultra Quiet Floors, Valley Shades, Vanco Contracting, Vega Civil Engineering, Vertex Technology Design & Consulting, Washington Commercial Painters, Western Partitions, Whitaker/Ellis Builders

The newly opened Holgate Library in Southeast Portland has transformed from a modest 6,400-square-foot facility built in 1971 into a 21,000-square-foot community hub designed to serve one of Portland’s most diverse populations.

The library, part of Multnomah County’s bond measure to revitalize Portland’s library infrastructure, stands prominently along Southeast Holgate Boulevard with features aimed at serving all age groups.

The project is a strong example of how community engagement, design innovation and sustainability building practices create a built environment that will serve the entire surrounding community for years to come. The building’s design resulted from extensive community input through focus groups, public meetings and surveys. Teens participated in a four-week virtual program called “Your Library, Your Voice” to help design the library’s first enclosed teen space in the system. The room was envisioned as a “home away from home.”

Sustainability was central to the construction approach. The library utilizes a hybrid mass timber structure that reduced the building’s carbon footprint by 61 percent compared to conventional steel and concrete construction. The ground floor features a denser column layout to support heavy book loads, while the second floor has fewer columns for a more open design.

The mass timber frame utilizes Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) for floor and roof decking, Glue-Laminated Timber (glulam) for primary structural support, and Buckling-Restrained Braces (diagonal steel elements) for lateral stability.

Designed to receive LEED Gold certification, the building incorporates radiant flooring for thermal comfort and a rooftop photovoltaic system to offset energy usage.

The library features advanced amenities including a large play and learning space for children, a dedicated teen room, flexible programming rooms, and the latest technology with high-speed internet. An outdoor plaza provides space for reading and socializing.

Construction company Swinerton served as the CM/GC, bringing in its subsidiary, Timberlab, for the mass timber components. The project maintained zero recordable injuries throughout construction.

The project also emphasized economic inclusion, with Swinerton implementing a Project-Specific Workforce Diversity Program. Swinerton’s project team also assumed the role of mentors, guiding businesses through the intricacies of preconstruction and construction phases. In addition to fostering strong relationships and supporting their sustainable growth, Swinerton provided comprehensive training that included technical skills, project controls, budget management, and project execution. The project and these efforts helped three companies acquire COBID certification. The Holgate Library project had a 25 percent diverse business goal (COBID) and hit 34 percent.

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The single largest project in the overhaul of Portland International Airport – creation of a new main terminal – is well under way.

But instead of a typical ground-up building process, construction of the most striking and eye-catching portion of that new structure – its roof – is taking place in the northeast corner of the airport property, next to the Port of Portland Fire Department headquarters.

Designed by ZGF Architects to emulate Oregon’s lush forestlands, the mass-timber roof is an ode to the local environment. The undulating structure consists of a skeleton of enormous steel girders fabricated by Evraz in Portland. Those are connected by a series of massive, arching glulam beams made from Douglas fir by Zip-O-Log Mills of Eugene. Topping it off are hundreds of two-inch mass-plywood panels made by Freres Lumber of Lyons.

“It was very important to Port of Portland leadership, so they worked strategically with ZGF on developing the specifications on this prescribed sourcing,” said Katrina Day, a senior project manager with Hoffman Skanska Joint Venture, the project’s general contractor. “It’s intended as a nod to the local community and making sure that we’re reinvesting in Oregon for the project.”

The prefabricated roof is an ingenious solution to some unique construction problems.

First is the building site: a busy international airport that before the pandemic was serving nearly 20 million travelers per year. The sheer volume of people moving though PDX and the importance of the airport as a travel hub means it cannot be shut down for construction – and assembling the roof in place would have required that for safety and security reasons.

“If you stick-built this over the terminal, these members are too big,” Hoffman Skanska senior superintendent Jason Koski said. “You couldn’t build anything like this and have an occupied building. So, by doing these large modules, we’re able to keep the terminal open at all times during construction.”

Instead, the project team took over a 20-acre site next to the near the fire department headquarters and poured a reinforced concrete pad engineered to support the weight of not only the roof structure, but also the massive hydraulic jacks and self-propelled modular transporters that will be used to move the finished roof segments across the airport’s north runway to their eventual home.

“We’ll set those at night in roughly a six-hour window where we can shut the building down,” Koski said.

The full roof will be assembled in spring 2022 from 20 separate pieces. Of those, 16 will be “super modules” featuring arched glulam beams topped with mass-plywood panels fabricated by Freres Lumber and milled into shape by Swinerton subsidiary Timberlab at its Northeast Portland plant. The other four will be smaller “cassettes” to fill in spaces left over.

“Nobody has ever made them to this standard, and nobody has ever made an arched glulam this large,” Day said. “In fact, in the design, they were spliced halfway through because there was no standard for designing to know whether they were constructable. So, Zip-O (employees) took it upon themselves to build a full-size mockup to ensure we could eliminate the splice.”

That effort was successful, and the resulting 80-foot-long beams are up to 9 feet tall.

The wood for the glulams was sourced from local forestlands managed by the Yakama, Coquille and Skokomish tribes as well as other landowners practicing responsible forest management.

“We’re putting our first layer of roofing on,” Koski said. “And we’re putting in all the lighting conduit, the fire alarm conduit, the sprinkler system, the roof drains, and then acoustical panels.”

About 60 percent of the lattice that decorates the interior part of the structure in graceful curves will be installed beforehand, according to Swinerton superintendent Brendan Kelly.

A lot of work was needed in the design and engineering phase to come up with the plan, Port of Portland Construction Services Manager Brad Harrison added.

“We started from scratch, but to stick-build this thing it became apparent that it would almost shut down the airport,” he said. “The contractor was like, the more modular construction you can do, the better, from a whole cost perspective and a safety perspective.”

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Swinerton decided a number of years ago that it wanted to be a significant player in the burgeoning mass-timber market.

Since launching Swinerton Mass Timber, the firm has contributed to delivery of a large number of projects featuring cross-laminated timber, mass plywood and other products. Then, in March, as an evolution of Swinerton Mass Timber.

The company’s former equipment rental warehouse in Northeast Portland has become a 23,000-square-foot fabrication facility that includes a custom-made Biesse five-axis computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine capable of handling glued-laminated beams as long as 60 feet.

“We’re a complete design-build firm, doing work nationally on mass-timber structures, and as a subcontractor and vendor to other GCs and owners,” Timberlab President Chris Evans said during a tour of the plant off of Northeast Columbia Boulevard.

In addition to providing design-build timber structures and fully coordinated mass-timber supply packages, Timberlab offers licensed timber engineering and mass-timber product development. The new fabrication facility is where much of that work takes place.

“The whole intent of this Biesse machine is to handle beams that are needed for long-span office buildings and tall timber buildings,” preconstruction manager Erica Spiritos said. “It’s really to eliminate any dimensional constraints that we would otherwise have on CNC machines that are operational in the region, or even in the country, and build capacity to handle the fabrication for the type of members that are needed in the buildings that we are increasingly building.”

While most fabricators of cross-laminated timber or similar products also incorporate CNC milling into their workflow, Timberlab now has the ability to fabricate or mill complicated designs into the rough, manufactured glulam beams and columns that support most mass-timber structures.

“Our whole thing is about being flexible, so part of this was to provide a needed resource within the industry,” business development manager Sam Dicke said. “The glulam manufacturers near us are without secondary fabrication ability to make it into a component. So, this is really about cutting pieces to make those pieces into building components and bring all those glulam manufacturers into the commercial mass-timber market that they might not otherwise be in.”

Much of Timberlab’s efforts are intended to simplify and shorten the time frame of construction on jobsites by focusing on details like connections, sealants and preconstruction work. For example, a new tracking and quality control system uses colored labels with QR codes that identify every unique piece of mass timber for a given project. Each piece corresponds to its counterpart in the project’s 3D model, which allows immediate tracking and improved quality assurance.

Meanwhile, the colored tag affixed to every finished piece of mass timber shows which certification program may have played a role in the procurement process. Timberlab uses FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) certified products, as well as noncertified products.

“This allows our crews in the field to scan this QR code and know exactly where this beam has been and where it needs to go,” Dicke said, “and they can relate it back to the model.”

The Biesse CNC machine is currently being put to use for the massive Terminal Core Redevelopment project (T-Core) at Portland International Airport, as well as another project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, involving glulam beams as long as 50 feet.

The T-Core project is taking up much of Timberlab’s time these days. The shop crew is fabricating 36,000 pieces of FSC-certified Douglas fir lattice supplied by Sustainable Northwest Wood, as well as Freres Lumber mass-plywood panels to frame 18 massive skylights.  These components, paired with nearly 400 80-foot-long glulam arches and a mass plywood roof diaphragm, will comprise the airport terminal’s new ceiling – all sourced from sustainably managed forests and manufactured by mills and laminators in Oregon or Washington.

“It’s 36,000 pieces of 3-by-6 Douglas fir members that all have a different geometry to conform to the undulating roof structure,” Spiritos said. “It’s very precise geometry, so we’re fabricating those pieces and also the mass-plywood skylights.”

It’s a lot of work for a small shop crew, production manager Martin Chabot said.

“There are six of us in the shop, but it’s about to go up dramatically,” he said. “We’re going to start an evening shift to be able to keep up. We’ve been full-on for the last two weeks in here, and obviously the planning for longer than that. But we could be nonstop just focusing on T-Core full time and it would be a year without doing anything else.”

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