Page 10 - Georgia Forestry - Winter 2018

SRG PARTNERSHIP, INC.
The 206,000- square-foot garage will have the capacity for 360 parking spots when completed. The structure will highlight
the durability and untapped potential for wood in non residential applications.
as Glenwood. During the planning process, Mayor Lundberg was inspired by an article in National Geographic by architect and mass timber construc- tion visionary Michael Green. From that article, Mayor Lundberg began to understand the potential of mass timber and its ability to connect the city’s rich heritage with a modern vision for the future.
“I realized that we could usher forest products into the future by featuring mass timber in our sig- nature redevelopment project,” Mayor Lundberg said. “We could capture all of the benefits of wood as an environmentally sound, renewable material that is locally grown.”
Her vision for a “signature project” is a one-of- a-kind, four-story parking garage that features cross-laminated timber (or CLT) as the primary structural component. Relatively new to the U.S., CLT panels are manufactured using several layers of sawn lumber boards stacked in alter- nating directions, bonded and pressed to form a structural, rectangular panel. She is planning to build the parking garage at the center of the devel- opment, which will include a conference center, hotel, commercial building and park.
In an effort to put pen to paper, Mayor Lundberg partnered with a design institute within the Uni- versity of Oregon School of Architecture to address concerns about weatherization and durability — especially given the cold and damp climate where the structure would be located. Nine students, guided by faculty, worked on the project and ulti- mately verified that a CLT parking garage was, indeed, structurally and architecturally feasible.
It was then that Mayor Lundberg’s vision became a possibility, and a community-wide movement started to boil.
But Why Wood?
And Why Now?
CLT panels and other mass timber architectural systems have been gaining traction in Europe and Canada for the past 20 years, but it is a newer, niche concept for builders and architects in the U.S. So building the first wood parking deck wasn’t something that could happen overnight. The right combination of political support, funding,
8 | GEORGIA FORESTRY