Local experts team on Sustainability Center

Living Building Challenge tests designers' limits.

The city of Portland in March decided on a team of local experts to perform a feasibility study for the city’s proposed Sustainability Center of Excellence, a state-of-the-art building that would serve as an icon of green building best practices, reflect the region’s leadership in sustainability and act as a “living laboratory” in downtown Portland.

The world class design team—which includes Gerding Edlen Development Co., SERA Architects, GBD Architects, Interface Engineering, PAE Consulting Engineers Inc., Glumac, Hoffman Construction Company and Green Building Services—is aiming for Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, as well as the Living Building Challenge, a program created by the Cascadia Green Building Council that requires buildings to be self-sustaining by generating their own power and reusing water on-site, among other things.

“We believe it’s a huge economic development opportunity for both the city and the state and are excited that our development and design team are all Portland area businesses,” says Damin Tarlow, development manager at Gerding.

The Sustainability Center is the culmination of many stakeholders including the Portland Development Commission, the Portland + Oregon Sustainability Institute (P+OSI), the State of Oregon, the Oregon University System (a collection of seven campuses), Portland Community College and the Oregon Living Building Initiative, a consortium of leading sustainability-focused organizations.

“The center is meant to reflect what we do well here in Portland, which is convene and collaborate across sectors,” says Rob Bennett, director of P+OSI and a major driver of the project.

Bennett says that the feasibility study should test the ambition of the project against the realities of costs and the real estate market. So far the center has 200,000 square feet of committed space for businesses expressing interest in partnering in the project as either owners or leasers.

The price tag to Oregon and Portland taxpayers is still unknown. The team held a weeklong design charrette in April to set the direction for the living building design approach. The study is expected to be completed by June 2009.