Sustainability Center ready to rise to ‘green’ future

Legislature’s $80 million bond lays groundwork for new downtown building

By Steve Law

The Portland Tribune, Jul 14, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (10 Reader comments)

Downtown Portland looks like it’ll get the world’s greenest large building, near Portland State University.

The trail-blazing Oregon Sustainability Center appears to be viable, after the Oregon Legislature granted $80 million in construction funding and consultants decreed that it’s possible for the 13-story building to produce all its own energy and recycle its water and sewage.

The project, a collaboration between the Oregon University System, city of Portland, Portland Community College, environmental and other groups, aims to be the world’s first large-scale “Living Building,” a self-sustaining structure producing no net carbon emissions and putting no demands on the community’s water and sewer systems.

In the waning days of the legislative session, lawmakers OK’d an $80 million bond that would be paid off more than 30 years from building rents. Gov. Ted Kulongoski supports the project and will sign the funding bill, spokesman Rem Nivens said Tuesday.

The money “provides the resources that we need to make this project happen,” said Andrea Durbin, Oregon Environmental Council executive director, and part of a working group putting the project together.

Solar panels, energy efficiency

The feasibility study, released in late June by the project development team, showed that the technical requirements for the building can be met, she said. That report, by Gerding Edlen Development, GBD and SERA architects, Hoffman Construction and others, concluded that a 222,800-square-foot building can be erected on the infill site that meets a 2006 open challenge by green building proponents to create the world’s largest and most advanced green building.

The development team concluded the building could produce all its own energy using a geothermal system and photovoltaic solar panels, plus energy-saving office practices such as laptop computers instead of desktop computers, said Lisa Abuaf, co-project manager for the Portland Development Commission. The building would use existing technology to treat and reuse all water and sewage from the building, she said.

The Oregon Sustainability Center would house a variety of public, academic and environmental groups on the site of an existing parking lot on Montgomery Street between Southwest Fourth and Fifth avenues.

Not surprisingly, the feasibility study determined that the special features in the project would be costly, for a total estimated $102 million price tag. At that rate, there’s a sizable funding gap, and tenants would pay sky-high rents of nearly $32 a square foot.

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