osc-2-600x300.jpeg
  • The "living building" is dead.
RIP, $64.6 million "living building" in the center of Portland. The tumultuous life of the Oregon Sustainability Center seems to have come to a conclusion today with a press release Mayor Sam Adams' office sent out this afternoon:
"The proposed Oregon Sustainability Center was set to be a laboratory for green technology and was designed to be the largest “net zero” high-rise ever built.

At the request of my City Council colleagues, we found a private partner — Interface Engineering — that offered to co-own the proposed cutting-edge building. Interface Engineering is a great Portland-based company that is known world-wide for excellence in their field.

Nonetheless, it’s become clear to me this week that I don’t have the votes necessary to pass the project through Portland City Council and we won’t be moving forward."

The center was supposed to be a gleaming beacon of the city's support of green jobs, but the pricetag for the building had many people questioning whether the building was economically sustainable.