Oregon Mass Timber Coalition
Coalition Lead: Port of Portland
Phase 2 Award: $41 million
Private Investment (Sept. 2022 – Sept. 2024): $3 million
Additional Public and Nonprofit Funding (Sept. 2022 – Sept. 2024): $6.4 million
Project Description:
The Oregon Mass Timber Coalition is utilizing a $41 million BBBRC grant to become a national leader in using mass timber to accelerate affordable housing production, provide good jobs, and restore forest health. Oregon faces a range of formidable threats ranging from climate change, economic inequality, an acute housing shortage, and a mismatch in the demand and supply of rural labor. The Oregon Mass Timber Coalition is simultaneously addressing all of these through targeted investments in sustainable forest management systems, equitable workforce training opportunities, cutting-edge building-materials research and development, and zoning updates for wildfire-affected communities.
The coalition brings together partners across the state, including the Oregon Department of Forestry, the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, the Port of Portland and a host of private-sector entities.
VIDEO: Mass Timber Rising Trailer - Oregon Mass Timber Coalition
As of September 2024, the coalition has made significant strides in achieving its vision of establishing a sustainable forest-to-house mass timber supply chain.
- The Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development has developed and begun disseminating a model code and audit workbook for wildfire-affected communities to update their zoning laws to better accommodate for modular timber housing. Such structures are more fire-resistant than traditional construction methods and can help mitigate the human damage wrought by increasingly frequent and intense wildfires.
- The Oregon Department of Forestry has auctioned off a series land parcels to logging companies via Good Neighbor Agreements to remove small-diameter trees and other small-scale wood matter. The thinning of less-developed trees not only provides a steady supply of timber, but it also helps decrease the intensity of wildfires, as smaller trees are more likely to act as fuel for unchecked burns.
- The University of Oregon has made significant progress in developing a prototype formass-timber workforce housing employing mass ply prefabricated panels, with construction of a first full-scale prototype nearing completion in the TallWood Design Institute’s Emmerson Lab. Oregon’s housing shortage—one of the most acute in the country— can be significantly eased with the development of cost-effective and sustainable pre-fabricated mass timber housing.
- The Port of Portalnd has efforts underway to redevelop a former marine terminal into a campus for innovation in mass timber and housing manufacturing with a renovated warehouse for building modular housing nearly complete, addtional funding secured for critical infrastructure, R&D facilities nearing approval and workforce training in development.
Coalition Overarching Narrative (applicant submitted) (PDF)
“This investment will drive jobs, sustainable forestry, and mass timber housing. We're creating equitable economic development and family-wage rural and urban jobs from sustainable wood products that are grown and manufactured in Oregon.”
Oregon Mass Timber Coalition
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