Oregon’s first-ever medical facility built from mass timber opened to patients this week, with Skanska USA finishing work on the St. Charles Cancer Centre in Redmond. Wood Central understands that Skanska broke ground on the Central Oregon site in June 2024, topping out the steel and mass timber framework in February 2025 before moving to the enclosure and internal fit-out.
The new centre is nine times the size of the Redmond facility it replaces, with 36 exam rooms, 22 chemotherapy infusion bays, and semi-private and private treatment spaces that serve up to 300 patients a day. Portland-based TVA Architects led the design, which uses 86 glulam beams and 30 cross-laminated timber panels across more than 929 square metres of the roof and second-floor structure, with a further 20 km of structural timber in the interior framing.
Construction of the concrete vault housing the linear accelerator required approximately 140 truckloads, totalling 2.54 million kilograms of concrete, with walls 1.8 metres thick and a ceiling ranging from 1.2 to 2.4 metres, to meet the radiation shielding requirements for the True Beam Linear Accelerator and the high-dose brachytherapy suite. The 465-square-metre chemotherapy infusion room sits on the second floor, looking onto the Cascade Range through floor-to-ceiling windows.
Skanska USA Building Oregon senior vice president Todd Predmore, speaking at the February 2025 topping out, said the milestone marked a step toward delivering “life-saving treatments and holistic support for patients across Central Oregon.”
Skanska’s Trevor Wyckoff, who oversees the firm’s Oregon and Southwest Washington building operations, told The Construction Specifier that every detail of the project was geared to remove barriers to care, with materials chosen to support a calming, patient-centred environment. The centre covers radiation oncology, chemotherapy infusion, surgical oncology, medical oncology, laboratory and pharmacy services, with additional space for nutrition, massage and acupuncture.
KPMB Architects and British Columbia’s Provincial Health Services Authority published cost modelling for mass timber hospitals in November 2025. The study found that a 200-bed acute mass timber hospital costs just 4.1 to 4.5 per cent more than a conventional steel-and-concrete equivalent.
