Portland kept its airport open through a full rebuild of the main terminal, and the payoff is a nine-acre mass timber roof that has become the airport’s signature. The Terminal Core Redevelopment doubled the ticketing hall and threaded new construction around live passenger traffic.
Project Scope
The $2 billion project put a 400,000-square-foot mass timber roof over the entire terminal core, fabricated from 3.3 million board feet of wood sourced within 300 miles of the airport. The 18-million-pound roof rests on 34 Y-shaped steel columns with seismic isolators at the top connection, so the roof can ride out an earthquake while the structure below moves. A Hoffman-Skanska joint venture built it, ZGF designed the roof, and Arup and KPFF engineered the structure. Timberlab fabricated the timber. Phase two wrapped up in 2026.
Why It Matters
Most big airport projects bulldoze and rebuild. Portland chose mass timber for a nine-acre roof partly to cut embodied carbon and partly to keep the regional forest economy in the supply chain. The local-sourcing rule turned the roof into a calling card for Pacific Northwest wood, and the seismic isolation approach is now studied by other West Coast owners facing the same earthquake risk. It’s proof that mass timber can carry a genuinely large public building, not just a boutique office.
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Project Team & Details
| Owner / Client | Port of Portland |
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| Architect | ZGF Architects |
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| Consultants | Arup (Engineering)
KPFF (Structural) |
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| General Contractor | Hoffman-Skanska Joint Venture |
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| Major Subcontractors | Timberlab (Mass Timber) |
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| Status | Completed |
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| Delivery Method | CMAR |
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