One of the world’s largest real estate developers, Hines Global Real Estate, is using mass timber to de-risk its portfolio – turning away from mega steel and concrete-based projects to build faster and leaner timber builds.
With over US $93.2 billion in assets under management, Hines has developed, redeveloped, or acquired more than 1,700 buildings across 30 countries, with more than 150 buildings under construction.
Through its Timber, Transit, Technology (T3) portfolio—covered by Wood Central last week—it preaches the benefits of mass timber and offsite manufacturing to build the next generation of A-grade commercial assets.
“It is quite amazing what they are doing for mass timber and offsite manufacturing adoption, not just in North America, but across the Asia-Pacific region,” Andrew Dunn said after attending a Fireside Chat about the Hines T3 building model yesterday.
The session featured Michael Horvath, Hine’s Vice President of Conceptual Construction; Susan Croswell, HDR’s Project Delivery Principal and Senior Associate; Steve Cavanaugh, DLR Group’s Principal and Lead Architect; and Jonathan Pearce, the Head of Investments, Office, and Life Sciences at Ivanhoé Cambridge, was Mr Dunn’s highlight from the first day of the International Mass Timber Construction conference in Portland.
According to Mr Pearce, who has worked with Hines for more than 20 years on funding projects, the pivot allows asset managers far greater flexibility in turning around buildings quickly whilst also avoiding dangerous 10-15-year project timeframes.
“From a risk management perspective, this just makes sense,” Mr Pearce said, “traditionally we would build multi-billion dollar steel projects. The problem with these projects is that we could start a project in 2012, put a shovel in 2017, finish the first stage in 2020, and start the second building that will be finished in 2025.”
“So what does that mean? It can take 15 years to finish a project,” Mr Pearce said before saying that mass timber buildings allow asset managers to play in “smaller and illiquid markets because the cheque size is so much smaller…allowing us to turn these buildings around quicker.”
The push by Hines to embrace the T3 model came after it found that older timber-based industrial buildings consistently kept their tenants, even with poor amenities. “We thought that developing modern timber buildings with amenities could help us tap into a new market of tenants,” said Mr Horvath during the Fireside Chat.
“Hines stressed that whilst T3 is sustainably-driven, it won’t stake up unless it was big on tenant appeal,” Mr Dunn said, who added that Hines T3 Collingwood project – one of the features from last year’s Timber Construct conference in Melbourne – is one of 26 T3 buildings rising, with potential projects in Brisbane and Sydney now also in the works.
Mr Dunn, who also attended last year’s conference as a special guest of the APA – Engineered Wood Association, said the trade show is enormous, “a mass timber enthusiasts dream.”
“The talks are also better than 2023, with two special presentations from Andrew Ball (President of oWow) and Eric Guenther (Principal from Interstice), both expanding on presentations provided at Timber Construct,” according to Mr Dunn, Timber Construct organiser, who said the Melbourne-based event will occur August 12-13.
The International Mass Timber Conference is the largest gathering of mass timber experts worldwide, with more than 2,700 delegates from 38 countries attending the five-day conference in Portland, Oregon.
Those delegates include nine from Taiwan, two from Japan, two from South Korea, one from China and Andrew Dunn – who toured several mass timber buildings in San Francisco and Oakland before visiting Strong-Tie’s R&D facility in Stockton, California – which will present later today as part of the TallWood Project.
As for Timber Construct, “we have now updated the program” with further “announcements about speakers in the coming weeks and months.”
Wood Central will provide rolling coverage of the International Mass Timber Conference in the coming days. For more information, including the conference’s agenda, visit the dedicated International Mass Timber Conference Website.
