California Holds Mass-Timber Building Competition

California plans to award $500,000 in grants to encourage the construction of mass-timber commercial and multifamily buildings, such as the Sonoma Academy's Janet Durgin Guild and Commons.

Photo by WRNS Studio/Michael David Rose

To grease the wheels of mass timber building construction in the state, the California Government Operations Agency, known as GovOps, is holding a developer-design competition for commercial and multifamily mass-timber building projects.

The two or three winners of the contest, administered by the nonprofit WoodWorks-Wood Products Council, will split a total of $500,000 in grants.

GovOps is seeking proposals for “viable and repeatable” mass timber projects in California, until March 18 at 5 p.m. Pacific. The grants will fund activities, including cost studies, permitting fees and information exchange sessions with code officials.

Developers, institutions and other corporations or legal organizations and their design and construction teams are eligible to enter the competition.

WoodWorks technical staff is available for consultations, via email request: CAMassTimberBuildingCompetition@WoodWorks.org.

Competition guidelines are available from GovOps, which expects to announce the winners late in May.

Nadine M. Post, ENR's former editor-at-large for buildings, is an award-winning journalist with 45 years of experience covering trends, issues, innovations, controversies and challenging projects. Post has written about many industry giants, including 10 ENR Award of Excellence winners. And she has covered disasters, failures and attacks, including the 1993 bombing and the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. Project stories include the redevelopment of the World Trade Center; the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa; Los Angeles’ Disney Concert Hall; and Seattle's Bullitt Center and Rainier Square Tower. In 1985, Post wrote McGraw-Hill's book Restoring the Statue of Liberty (1986) for the restoration’s architects—Richard S. Hayden and Thierry W. Despont.

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