When the Port of Portland decided it was time for our beloved Portland International Airport to expand for the future, a conversation immediately began around the regional impact this project could have - socially, economically and environmentally.  They wanted to know how they could make this new gateway to the Northwest feel even more local than it already does.

Designed by ZGF Architects, the firm shared the initial concepts of a soaring wooden roof and a light filled space sprinkled with live trees and enormous latticed skylights to filter the ever changing Portland skies.  ZGF Architect Jacob Dunn said “The design intends to inspire a feeling of walking through a forest.” 

 Spoiler alert: they nailed it!  

Photo credit for above image:  Ema Peters
Rendering below courtesy of ZGF Architects

Among the first questions the Port asked,  "Can we source all of  this wood locally? Sustainably? Equitably? Can we trace it back to the forests it comes from?”  

Our Founder and President Ryan Temple was part of those early wood sourcing conversations with the Port and ZGF that began more than 6 years ago. Though many in the room were skeptical and said this was not how the industry works, Ryan saw the challenge as a path to taking to scale what we were already doing at Sustainable Northwest Wood every day.

For most of the construction industry, lumber is just a commodity. It is very difficult for anyone buying lumber to know where it comes from, or how it was grown and harvested.    Most commonly, logs come into mills from a wide range of sources and management practices, and are not normally segregated based on the forest it was harvested from.  

We've been doing things a little differently than 'business as usual' since we opened our doors in 2008.  

Photo Credit for image below: Anvil
The log deck at the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians
100% traceable to the forests it grew

.A little back story: Ryan founded Sustainable Northwest Wood  after many years working for our nonprofit parent company Sustainable Northwest. His work there was centered around a program called Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities, where he uncovered a need for a central distribution hub that would bring in Good Wood from forest & ecosystem restoration projects, and small, rural mills throughout the region to green building projects in Portland, the greater PNW, and beyond.  

He opened Sustainable Northwest Wood Distribution Inc in the fall of 2008, in the midst of the worst recession in recent history.  Since then, we have grown year over year, as the demand for local, sustainable wood has gained traction through consumer demand as well as industry pressure for climate-smart solutions for reducing our collective carbon footprint.     

Since opening, we have expanded our connections into a broad network of trusted land stewards, rural and urban sawmills and fabrication partners throughout the Pacific Northwest.   Those relationships are what make it possible to turn local, responsibly sourced lumber into beautiful, locally grown & produced wood products, most of which are traceable to the source.   ALL of which meet or exceed the highest standards of ecological forestry or are by-products and salvaged from restoration projects or rescued from the waste stream.  More than half of our offerings are Forest Stewardship Council® Certified --  FSC® C041262.

For nearly 30 years, Ryan has built the right relationships with the right people doing great work in sustainable forestry leading up to this moment. So, when the Port wanted to know if they could trace wood for their project to the source, Ryan was absolutely confident it could be done, regardless of  some doubts in the room.    He also knew It was going to take time, coordination and a regional collaboration unlike anything at this scale had ever been done.  Along with ZGF and the Green Markets team at Sustainable Northwest, we set out to create an historic supply chain of local, responsibly sourced wood for the new PDX.

The new PDX makes a statement: You have arrived in Timber Country, the front door to the Pacific Northwest and a gateway to what is possible.  Some 30,000 people came together to bring this project to life. It is historic in scale, ambition and positive impact for our local forests, local people and the local economy.  

The unprecedented wood supply chain involved:

• More than a dozen well managed forests in Oregon & Washington
• 4 Tribal Partners – Yakama Nation, the Skokomish Tribe, the Coquille Tribe, and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians
•  Over 600,000 board feet of the 3"x6" Douglas fir timbers we supplied for the ceiling lattice are 100%  Forest Stewardship Council® Certified,  with ALL of that wood traceable to specific forests in the region
• Three key local sawmills processed the logs for the solid Douglas fir timbers in the ceiling lattice:  Elk Creek Forest Products, Kasters Kustom Cutting, and Manke
• Elk Creek Forest Products went above and beyond in  their commitment to keeping FSC Chain of Custody intact. This project would not have been possible without them. 
• Timberlab processed all of lattice timbers with high-tech computerized milling and CNC machining.  Each piece is milled on a slightly different bevel to create the curves
• Woman-owned Portland business Timber Pro UV provided 8000 gallons of stain to seal the wood.  Owner Shari Steber developed  a custom color for the project known as "PDX White" that was applied by Horizon Painting based in Eugene 
• Our friends at Zena Forest Products supplied over 75,000 SF of their Oregon White Oak EdgeGrain flooring for the new main terminal, revolutionizing their manufacturing process, and giving travelers a beautiful new backdrop for shoe selfies 
  
  
• 72% of the wood on the overall project is FSC® Certified   
• 16% of the wood was Tribally sourced
• 100% of the wood is local and sourced within 300 miles of PDX

Beyond the roof, we sought out other opportunities to include local wood for the project: 

• We sourced 8000 board feet of Douglas fir from the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians for the TSA screen rooms, concessions, and the seam wall.  Most of this wood came from logs they salvaged and milled from a 2019 wildfire that decimated over 3600 acres of their ancestral land.   
• Oregon White Oak for the wall panels throughout the space & beautiful herringbone flooring that we supplied for Loyal Legion's new space was sourced from urban sawmill Epilogue Lumber – who salvaged and milled much of the wood from ice storm damaged trees

o Fun Facts: the Oregon White Oak wall panel substrate is made from offcuts from the airport’s own Mass Plywood Panel wood waste! Reclaimed & recycled by a Minority Woman Owned Business - Sankofa Lumber and processed into beautiful panel material by Trillium Pacific Manufacturing.  Some of the leftover oak from that part of the project was used for the ebonized herringbone oak flooring in Loyal Legion. 

Click the image in the gallery to enlarge.

At the house warming party, just a couple days before the Grand Opening, our Founder Ryan Temple had the chance to share his thoughts about the project. 

"I predict  the impact of this project will not be measured by what has happened up until today, but by what will happen tomorrow.  So what is our collective role in determining what that may be?  Sure, look up and say 'wow'.  And without a doubt we need to look around and say thank you to the amazing group of people that made it possible.   But most importantly, we need to look ahead and envision a future where our wood choices always lead to healthy forests and communities.  Because of this project and the friends that we have become, we know we can make that happen."  

Image below credit to Josh Kulla

Photo credit Ema Peters