Santiam Canyon School District

When the Santiam School District in rural Oregon needed a new gym, they decided to use a mass timber product manufactured by a local company over a barebones, prefabricated metal building. The resulting wood structure has become a point of civic pride for members of the community, who appreciate that it was created by their friends and neighbors using wood from nearby forests. The veneer-based cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, known as mass ply panels (MPP), met both the structural and aesthetic needs of the project. A similar product was also used to form the columns and 72-foot beams spanning the space. Speed of construction was a big benefit of choosing mass timber; the primary gym structure went up in just 15 days with two crane operators and six carpenters. The new gym gives hundreds of junior and senior high school students much-needed space for PE class and sports practices.

See the WoodWorks technical case study on the Santiam Gym.