News in offsite construction

The new Terminus at District 56 commercial building located in Langford, B.C. has been completed. The five-story mass timber post-and-beam building includes mass-timber components from Structurlam Mass Timber Corp., in partnership with Design Build Services and Aspect Structural Engineers. Located on Vancouver Island, the new building contains the first buckling-restrained braces housed within a timber frame.

Construction is underway on Ontario’s first mass timber and net-zero carbon institutional building. The A-Block expansion program at Centennial College’s Progress Campus in Scarborough began in November and progress is already visible at the site. The expansion includes a 136,000 square-foot extension of the existing A-Block Building, using FSC certified black spruce from Northern Quebec, which has been cross-laminated and glue-laminated.

A proposed project by the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition to create a mass timber modular facility in Portland has been selected as one of 60 finalists for new federal funding through the $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge. If chosen to move forward, they could receive up to $100 million to expand mass timber production, boost jobs, help with wildfire prevention, and lead to more affordable housing.

On Tuesday morning (12-14-21), the movement to build large structures from specially engineered wood, frequently called mass timber, got a major boost when George Brown College broke ground on what will be Ontario’s tallest wood building. The building will be called Limberlost Place, after Limberlost Forest and Wildlife Reserve in Ontario’s Muskoka region, and is being funded in part by a $10 million (CAD) donation.

While it is still awaiting neighborhood planning approval and complete design refinements, Canada’s Earth Tower, a proposed 40-story hybrid wood tower in Vancouver, B.C. by the Delta Land Development in collaboration with architectural firm Perkins+Will, has city residents “quite enthusiastic about the project,” especially for its low-carbon and high-performance qualities.

New Zealand’s goal of becoming carbon-neutral, as well as reducing earthquake risk, has led to new research with broader implications on the use of cross-laminated timber (CLT) walls. According to University of Canterbury’s Seismic Associate Professor Minghao Li and his team, the eco- and cost-friendly alternative to steel and concrete could credibly be used in low-rise buildings.

Tim Gokhman is the managing director of New Land Enterprises and a driving force behind using one of the oldest building materials to reshape Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s skyline. Gokhman’s latest project, a 25-story building named Ascent, is being built at the corners of Van Buren and Kilbourn in downtown Milwaukee.

Kandola Forest Products (KFP) began operations in April 2021 in the former C&C mill facility located in Quesnel, BC. Neal Kandola, the CEO of the value-added mill appeared before the Quesnel city council and reported that KFP has captured a bigger market share that previous company operating out of the mill was ever able to accomplish.

The new main terminal at Portland Oregon’s International Airport (PDX) is starting to take shape. The construction of the massive, undulating wood roof is set to be the crowning jewel of PDX’s $2 billion expansion. The 392,000-square-foot mass timber roof is being put together like a huge 3-D puzzle about a mile away from the new terminal.