Look — up in the sky! It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s Pacific Northwest timber products.

Portland International Airport’s updated main terminal, with its showstopper nine-acre roof made from locally sourced wood, opened to the public Aug. 14.

The upgrades are part of the $2.15 billion PDX Next project that has included 30,000 workers and about 150 small businesses.

The new terminal was inspired by the forests and natural beauty of the region and designed to connect visitors to that rugged terrain.

The Port of Portland worked with ZGF Architects of Portland and nonprofit Sustainable Northwest, which connects timberland owners with the green building industry.

The partners aimed to show how managing forests to address their health can also create jobs, materials and services. They also sought to prove that sustainably sourced wood that can be tracked is possible for large construction projects.

For most of the construction industry, lumber is anonymous, which helps the industry create consistent products efficiently.

“This wood is not just wood. It comes from family owned forests and forests managed by tribal nations who are managing the land better than they found it,” said Paul Vanderford, senior director of wood markets for Sustainable Northwest.

Vanderford stressed the airport project wasn’t a one-off.

“We have created a process for sourcing wood from local, sustainably managed wood and tracking that wood from the forest. … We created the wheel and we can spin it again and again for projects throughout the region,” he said.

Engineered wood productsIn the roof and lattice ceiling, 3.5 million board feet of wood was used, and that included two engineered wood products: mass plywood panels and glulam beams.

Both can withstand heavy weights and are fire resistant.

PDX Next involvement

PDX Next involvement

Partners in the Portland International Airport main terminal upgrade included four tribes in Oregon and Washington: The Yakima Nation, the Coquille Indian Tribe, the Skokomish Indian Tribe and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians.

All four harvested the timber they supplied for the airport roof from their sovereign lands.

Other nonprofit organizations that supported the project were:

In Oregon, Hanschu Family Forest in Gales Creek, Hyla Woods in Timber, Zena Forest Products of Salem, Willamette University Educational Forest, Camp Adams Youth Camp and Camp Namanu.

From Washington, Roslyn Urban Forest, the Nature Conservancy – Cle Elum Forest, Chimacum Ridge Community Forest, Camp Bish Gray’s Harbor YMCA and Joint Base Lewis McCord.

Others involved in the project included: structural engineer KPFF; contractor Hoffman Skanska USA Building; mass timber consultant Swinerton; mass timber fabricators Timberlab, Calvert, Freres and Zip-O-Laminators; wood advisors Sustainable Northwest and Sustainable Northwest Wood; Oregon lumber mills Elk Creek Forest Products, Frank Lumber of Mill City, Freres Lumber of Lyons; Herbert Lumber of Riddle, Kasters Kustom Cutting of Mulino, Zip-O-Log Mills of Eugene, Umpqua Indian Forest Management of Roseburg and Jayzee Lumber of Joseph, as well as Manke Lumber of Tacoma, Wash.

All of the ceiling and roof wood came from forests within 300 miles of the airport, and 96% of that was from sustainably managed forests.

About 2 million board feet of glulam beams were used in the roof.

Freres Engineered Wood provided 400,000 square feet of its Mass Ply Panels for the PDX terminal. MPP consists of multiple wood pieces glued together into large components including panels and beams. The material can be customized for construction.

Engineered wood products such as MPP can use smaller diameter and salvaged timber that once had little value for the industry.

Tyler Freres, vice president of sales, said the project demonstrated environmental stewardship with a “forest-to-frame” approach.

“Nearly 75% of the wood fiber used in our MPP was salvaged from the 2020 Labor Day wildfires in Oregon and 100% of the material was sourced from local Oregon fiber,” he said.

The airport roof is about 18 million pounds, and includes 49 skylights and 2,425 MPP panels around the perimeter to create a curved design.

Other terminal detailsThe new PDX terminal also used 51,000 board feet of oak for wood flooring, all from the Willamette Valley via Zena Forest Products.

There’s also a live, urban forest underneath the roof, as well as a dozen shops and restaurants, including a mezzanine bar with nearly 100 Oregon beers on tap.

And the old-school carpet pattern is back for shoe selfies.

While the terminal is now officially open to the public, some portions will continue to undergo upgrades until 2026 as part of a second phase of the project.

Construction on the PDX Next project, funded by airport tenants such as airlines, started in April 2021, but the plans were a decade in the making.

Despite the construction, the airport hasn’t been closed a day.