LiveGreenInPortland.com

The Oregon Sustainability Center will be located on the eastern edge of Portland State University campus in downtown Portland, Oregon.  LATE 2013

In 2007, several sustainability-focused nonprofits began planning a commonly held office space in Portland to share expenses, resources, and to take advantage of the synergies that are created when ideas are shared in close proximity. A priority for the group, led by the Oregon Environmental Council and Earth Advantage Institute, was constructing a building that adheres to the then-recently released Living Building Challenge ™ guidelines, which would qualify it among the most sustainable buildings ever designed and constructed.

Coincidentally, the Oregon University System (OUS), under the leadership of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education, was developing similar plans for Oregon universities to pool resources for a facility dedicated to sustainability research, and thus the two groups began collaborating in the spring of 2008.

That summer, they learned that the City of Portland, led by the Office of Sustainable Development and Portland Development Commission, was also taking steps to construct a center for sustainability. Mayor Sam Adams called the parties together and formally proposed that the region’s public, private and academic communities collaborate in creating a space to keep Oregon at the forefront of the new green economy. The Oregon Sustainability Center would demonstrate that capability by creating the world’s first high-rise, net-zero energy, water, and carbon emissions building.

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