Date Posted: 04.29.2021
Construction will begin this year on the 94-acre $73 million Darrington Wood Innovation Center, a campus designed to house and attract next-generation wood product companies and strengthen the region’s economy. The center will bring roughly 150 competitive-wage jobs to the small town of Darrington, Washington, and produce cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glu-laminated timber with a focus on building new attainable housing. The center’s buildings will themselves be built with a variety of mass timber products including CLT.
“This facility offers an opportunity to steward the health of our forests through sustainable, high-value jobs in a historic timber town, while contributing attainable housing to Washington residents eager to own a stake in their own communities,” said Forterra president and CEO Michelle Connor. “This is a trifecta for the community, economy and environment.”
Forterra is leading the development and construction of buildings to suit wood innovation tenants. Mithun is providing integrated architecture, landscape architecture and interior design services. Additional team members include timber consultant Styxworks, KPFF as civil engineer and Aspect Engineering as structural engineer.
The project has received support from federal, state and local sources including a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration and a $2 million state grant.
“The Darrington Wood Innovation Center will transform this rural community into an innovation hub, developing sustainable, low-carbon cross-laminated timber (CLT) and investing in training a skilled workforce,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee. “These funds will allow the Center to break ground later this year, paving the region’s way to economic development and security.”
Senator Maria Cantwell said “The Darrington Wood Innovation Center would be the first of its kind in the United States, creating a campus where environmentally-friendly building materials, like cross-laminated timber, will be produced and where people will come to research and learn about these state-of-the-art wood products and how these products can be used to build next-generation, safe, and sustainable buildings.”
