It’s official. After a four-month delay, Portland International Airport’s (PDX) terminal is finally ready to launch! That is according to the Port of Portland – the port authority responsible for managing PDX, which reported that one of America’s most anticipated projects, which got underway more than five years before the pandemic, will finally welcome thousands of visitors from August 14, 2024.
As reported by Portland local media, thousands of visitors will finally stand under the new nine-acre timber roof and stroll across the PDX carpet. And with the return of some pre-security shopping and dining, people can enjoy the new space—no tickets required.
Already, 22 new shops and restaurants have been added to the expanded space, with more than 1,000 workers last month finishing off the installation of American White oak flooring and benches for seating, as well as tiling and painting of new concessional spaces.
In April, Wood Central reported that the timber used in the seating comes from Zena Forest Products in Rickreall, with Yakama Forest Products one of several timber suppliers who contributed to the new terminal, touted as the largest mass timber project in North America.
Now, attention is turning to the internal greenery, with crews working to install 72 Portland native trees inside the massive terminal. For its measure, the port authority says the trees will recreate a “walk in the forest,” with a further 5,000 new plants installed inside the Airport over the next 6-12 months.
“We wanted to evoke Pacific Northwest landscapes, so it felt like you arrived before you left the airport,” said J.P. Paull, a principal at PLACE, the landscape architect behind the Airport’s design.
How a new airport roof made tall timber mainstream across America!
Earlier this year, Wood Central reported that the Airport, which uses 400 glulam beams in its 392,000-square-foot roof, is inspiring a revival of timber construction across the country’s heartland. This led CBS Saturday Morning co-host Jeff Glor to travel to Portland, Oregon, America’s new ground zero for the great green switch, where timber-based buildings are replacing steel, concrete, and glass-based buildings.
“Walking into Portland’s new airport is like seeing a version of the future, firmly rooted in the past,” Mr Glor said, adding that massive pieces of timber are now being bonded and pressed together, made into walls and floors, and installed all at once. Which, for one, “can dramatically speed up construction.”
Speaking to Curtis Robinhood, the Port of Portland’s Executive Director, the man leading the $2B redevelopment of PDX, dubbed America’s Favourite Airport: “It’s pretty exciting, you are starting to see this come together,” Mr Robinhold said, who said the dream for the new Airport, is for “the airport to become a destination point for the Portland community.”
According to Chris Evans, President of Timberland, who is responsible for manufacturing the roof, mass timber “is just a whole bunch of 2 x 6’s glued together,” adding that it is the future of construction. And it’s not just in Oregon. “There are now more projects in the Northeast (in design phase) than there are here in the Pacific Northwest,” according to Mr Evans, who said, “You are starting to see the spread across the country.”
Indeed, “Mass timber is increasingly being used in museums, community centres, office buildings, and even a 25-storey condo in Milwaukee,’ Mr Glor said, with a growing amount of research into how mass timber products perform under seismic conditions and during intense fire.
“That’s the first reaction (that the timber building will burn down) that I had eight years ago when I was first introduced to it on an office building,” Mr Evans said, “once you understand what it is, and you don’t think of it just as wood. And think of it as a highly sophisticated structural system with this natural fire-resistant quality; then you see that (wow), this is a game-changer.”
“Using a system called track and trace,” Mr Robinhold said, “you can look up on the roof (of the new Portland Airport) and can identify where each of these pieces came from…which is quite astonishing.”
Following a ‘forest-to-frame’ philosophy, most timber used at the new Airport has been sourced from SFI (mutually recognised by PEFC International) or FSC-certified, with timber coming from tribal nations and small family-owned woodlands. “I think this is something that we are going to see in the future,” Mr Robinhood said, adding that timber-based construction is only marginally more expensive, “but it’s worth it.”
- To watch the full interview, visit the CBS YouTube channel. To read more about the PDX Airport redevelopment, visit Wood Central’s special feature.
