Work has now started on the Port of Portland’s redevelopment of its 40-acre former Terminal 2 marine site on the Willamette River, with the new mass timber campus projected to support more than 360 jobs and up to $115 million in regional GDP at full operational scale.
ZAUGG Timber Solutions, the Swiss-based mass timber manufacturer, has set up shop on the site as one of the first Phase 1 tenants and is currently awaiting final permits before its Terminal 2 operation can move into full-scale production.
Wood Central understands the campus is the first US site of its kind dedicated to mass timber housing manufacture and research at scale, designed to compress the path from product development to occupied dwelling and give Oregon a domestic answer to a housing shortage that has become the state’s dominant policy challenge.
Rachel Thieme, Economic Development Manager at the Port of Portland, said the redevelopment had been designed to activate a stretch of waterfront that had drifted out of productive industrial use and put the full mass timber supply chain inside one operational footprint. “We’ll have manufacturers, builders, start-ups all in one place,” Thieme said.
ZAUGG is one of the first Phase 1 tenants but unlikely to be the last, with the Port continuing to court additional manufacturers, builders and start-ups across the mass timber and housing innovation supply chain.
Marcus Kaufmann, who works with the Oregon Department of Forestry and helps run the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition, said Oregon was now in a position to become the United States’ domestic leader in mass timber, with European companies arriving as a direct result of investment already on the ground. “That’s a huge win for the state. That’s a huge win for everyone,” Kaufmann said.
It comes as Wood Central reported Oregon’s new acoustic lab is structured to close a critical gap in mass timber testing, with multi-storey housing in particular dependent on certified sound-transmission data for building-code approvals at the state and municipal level. The campus’s wider context is the Port’s mass timber roof at Portland International Airport’s redeveloped main terminal, which Wood Central reported opened in 2024 as the largest mass timber project in the United States, with the visibility of the airport build accelerating the push to move mass timber from commercial product into residential housing.
With ZAUGG awaiting final permits, the University of Oregon’s acoustics and energy lab in development, and additional Phase 1 tenants still to be confirmed, the next 24 months will determine whether the 40-acre campus can deliver the 360 jobs and up to $115 million in regional GDP the Port of Portland has promised Oregon.
