Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts
The "Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts” is a podcast hosted by Brady and Nic, two industry advocates for the field of sustainable construction. In each episode, they interview thought leaders, industry powerhouses, and true supporters of the sustainable building movement. They cover the entire sustainable building spectrum, from forest management to final construction of buildings.
The podcast is designed to educate and inspire listeners about the benefits of Mass Timber. Mass timber is a sustainable building material that has several advantages over traditional materials like concrete and steel. It is strong, lightweight, and renewable, and it can be used to build a variety of structures, from small homes to large skyscrapers.
In addition to discussing the benefits of Mass Timber, Brady and Nic also explore the challenges of sustainable building as a whole. They talk about the importance of forest management, the need for government support, and the challenges of educating both the public and the building industry about the benefits of sustainable building.
The Mass Timber Group Show is a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning more about sustainable building. It is a thought-provoking and informative podcast that will leave you inspired to make a difference.
Here are some of the topics that have been covered on the show:
- The benefits of Mass Timber construction
- The challenges of sustainable building
- Forest management
- Government support for sustainable building
- Educating building industry professionals about sustainable building
The Mass Timber Group Show is available to listen to on a variety of platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and YouTube.
If you are interested in learning more about sustainable building, I encourage you to check out The Mass Timber Group Show. It is a great resource for information, inspiration, and action.
Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts
Trending in Timber: Potential Mass Timber City + Timber Core Modular CLT Stair Core Systems
Will Denver's massive 600-acre River Mile development go mass timber? How does Carpentry Plus’s groundbreaking Timber Core modular stair core system benefit architects, engineers and general contractors working with CLT? Learn how Timber Core slashes installation time while boosting sustainability and safety, and dive into Denver’s transformative use of mass timber in projects like a 550,000 sq. ft. residential complex near the Broncos Stadium.
We tackle key topics like high-rise mass timber, sustainable urban growth, and the innovations driving Denver’s 40% downtown expansion. Whether you’re curious about modular mass timber solutions or Denver’s role in the future of eco-friendly construction, this episode is packed with insights and real-world examples.
Tune in to learn how mass timber is revolutionizing the AEC industry and shaping the cities of tomorrow.
Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!
There was a thread, a question, a challenge, if you will, that he issued about who is solving this mass timber core system like your stairs, your elevators, in this space. Because nobody's doing it yet. And, as an engineer, I've been looking for it and, funny enough, carpentry Plus was in attendance and they said let's talk, we're working on something. All right, man, what are you looking at today?
Speaker 2:I've never seen anything like this before. Maybe it's because I was living in Denver. I was so ingrained that I guess I knew the larger picture and I always wonder if other cities are doing this, like the New Yorks or the whatever San Francisco, dallas, chicago, miami, if the development and the building construction is truly moving this fast. I was scrolling through LinkedIn and I saw this guy by the name of Brett McCormick. He's a facilities fan. He does does sports arena type of investigation, he does journalism, and what's happening here in Denver is pretty impressive. So you go to therivermiledenvercom and there's a big stretch of land that is owned by the Walmart family. The Walmart family owns the Broncos Stadium in Denver.
Speaker 2:So this is downtown Denver. You can see my mouse right, yep. So you go to the left right here, this is ball arena. This is where the nuggets, the basketball team, the nuggets play and the avalanche, and, if anyone's keeping up on sports, they won the Stanley cup a few years ago. The Nuggets won the NBA Finals a few years ago. Just both monumental things to do in the championships and they pretty much won it back-to-back in the same arena. Just a really, really cool, big deal.
Speaker 1:I wish the Broncos had the same track record.
Speaker 2:That's the running joke. We'll see what happens. But to put this on the map, here's the running joke. We'll see what happens. But to put this on the map, here's the bronco stadium which you were talking about. Here's the elitch garden theater. This is an old amusement park. The broncos own this. The broncos the walmart family owns this. This is part of a bigger river mile development and if you kind of start to wrap your head around, like the sheer size and scale of what's going on, this is a city within a city, of a downtown, a square footage of 40% of the developable square footage of the downtown Denver will be getting brought online in these coming years, and so here's a couple more pictures to kind of give you an idea of like, how deep and where this is going.
Speaker 1:So this is like a huge footprint, right. So like, like you just said, like that picture, you're showing right there that you're building like a city inside of a city.
Speaker 2:Looks like to be about 761 acres of sports venue adjacent mixed use development.
Speaker 1:So what's the tie into mass timber here?
Speaker 2:So three years ago I was a part of the Rocky Mountain Real Estate Challenge. What they did was the University of Colorado and the University of Denver put on this graduate level real estate college, you know, like a competition, and what they do is these teams need to go find an architect, an engineer, a builder, a GC. They actually go to the drawing board and create real world designs board and create real world designs, real world projects where if they had deep pockets they could build it. And what happens is this starts to have a little bit of an interesting tie.
Speaker 2:Revesco Properties is the developer, the main developer of this. They sponsored the Rocky Mountain Real Estate Challenge. Because of the thread to family. They they chose to have 20% of all of the student projects use mass timber, and so they've done this in other cities I think it was like Boston or something like that where they they basically take this concept and they let these students run with it. You know, cause this stuff costs hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars of real world money, where not a lot of people can just kind of light that, you know, light that on fire in a way.
Speaker 2:Well, what this does is it, it really it? It pre-stages and it shows people the reality of what can happen. And so what they showed was that you're able to build these high rise. So we have 62 acres of this river mile development on the front range of the city, and so if you go back to the neighborhood and you start kind of like putting together who's in charge of this, you're going to start seeing the threat of mass timber. And the reason being is because if you go to walmartcom, you go to their page, they'll show you right here a glimpse of their 2.4 million square foot of office space that is going to be constructed in mass timber.
Speaker 1:That's interesting because we just talked about like a small part of their headquarters stuff on the last Trending in Timber episode that we did. But what you're showing me and this is in Arkansas there's 2.4 million square feet. So we're not just talking about a building, we're talking about a campus.
Speaker 2:We're talking about a major sprawling campus from the ground up. Now I don't know the details of like what, if they're scraping what they're scraping, or if this is like a true ground up development. I know that there's a lot of super secret squirrel stuff going on, a lot of NDAs and and you know who knows why. I mean I think you know when you're on that level maybe you just do things quietly, but there is an unbuilt 350 acre home office. I mean all of this is getting topped out right now. This is the Genslercom website, so you can go check this out.
Speaker 1:So funny side story about this project. So, like you said, it's kind of super secret squirrel. Nobody really talks openly about what's going on because of all the NDAs. But my wife and I watch tiny home videos. Like that's just what we do in the morning we drink a coffee, hold the baby and we watch videos about tiny homes.
Speaker 1:Up was like coolest small town place to live for millennials or something like that, and it was Crystal Springs, arkansas, and the Walmart family is a big donor of the Crystal or, excuse me, crystal Bridges, I think is what it is. There's an art museum there and after the first international mass timber conference I went to, we had a wedding down there and so we just flew in and they have big glulam beams or whatever. It's not mass timber but there's lots of glulam in there and I was just marveling at all the wood in this museum and my wife was like what are you doing? You're in like a world-class art museum right now. But anyway, so I've been to the town, I've seen what it's about. I know the like, the the Walton family influence down there.
Speaker 1:But back to this YouTube video that showed up. It was all about this little town and how it's popping off, walmart's moving in, it's bringing in all like the young bucks that are eager and, you know, making good money, and it's basically just becoming like a really awesome place to live. But what was interesting in the tie into this is so they were showing all these drone shots of the town and I don't know how they did it, whatever. But and they and mass timber wasn't uttered a single time in this video. But they have a drone shot and it goes over the Walmart campus and you can see all of the mass timber buildings under construction.
Speaker 1:I don't think that they were really allowed to do that, but if somebody wants to find out and see what's going on, like there's a there's a drone shot video of all these mass timber buildings getting built in this community and you can just get us a picture of the scale that's going on. Anyway, that was the tangent of saying like even in, like you know, quote unquote, unrelated, like mainstream videos and stuff that people are watching, like you're starting to see mass timber and like a daily part of life. But anyway, I had to, I had to just throw that in. But back to the river mile.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. It's like nobody knows about this stuff. It's so. We are the tip of the spear of this industry and it's just it's super exciting to see these absolute monster projects going up at every left turn. Here's a little bit of the vision, just to kind of round out like where this is, this is all brand, these are. These are visions.
Speaker 2:Somebody came to a white blank piece of paper and said we want to do something cool, let's go find this team, let's go do this, let's go do that. They're recon this, this river right here, that they're reconstructing and redeveloping that into what they want to create, like a fly fishing area where people can go down and literally fly for it, fly fish, and it's a. It's a micro community, it's a community within a community where it's the you know these new age walkable cities that just everything is, is immediately like at your fingertips Multi-decade, multi, multi-billion dollar type of vision, I mean and so and so what you're saying is like, because of who owns the land, the tie-in with the developer to this real estate challenge where they're like, hey, we're developing projects.
Speaker 1:Were they developing projects in that challenge for the river mile specifically?
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is an interesting kind of a thing. So the president, the founder of impact finance, stephanie, dr Stephanie Gripney, we were running in the same world. She, she's from Missoula, montana. She has a really really she's more educated in timber and forestry than most anybody out there. She's just a wealth of information.
Speaker 2:And we hit it off and I was in the mass timber world and I just moved out to Denver. She kind of took me under her wing a little bit and was like hey, we have this really cool Rocky mountain real estate challenge coming up. I'm a part of the we're, we're helping a sponsor it, you know um, co-produce it. They're like I'm a part of the mass timber um section, the advisory group. How like, why don't you be a part of it a little bit and let's just kind of talk? Well, ultimately, she's wildly connected in the nonprofit world and with a lot of like money and, like you know, financial type of things. Well, because of those direct connections, we we more or less helped advise that there would be a 20% threshold of mass timber for all of the buildings, and that's very specifically because of the Walmart family and how much incentive they have in their Arkansas universities that they're developing right now. Well, they're like hey, mass timber is sustainable, it has the story we want. Mass timber sustainable, it has the story we want, let's you know.
Speaker 2:And then now this is me just reading between the lines, like literally speculating, like none of this is dry, none of this is shake of the hand deal, there's no binding contracts. But if you just look a little bit deeper at what's going on, here's the ball arena oh, funny side note the one, the, the family that owns ball arena married into the Walmart family. There's another little bit of a deeper thread. So now you have the Walmart family that owns ball arena, you have the um, another family that owns ball arena, but they married into the Walmart family and they own all of this land here that's already slated to be developed. And so if you can kind of see what they're already doing in Arkansas, you'd probably be a little bit willing to bet there's going to be a tinge, there's going to be a sliver, there's going to be a piece of the pie here right in Denver.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's that'd be interesting to see how much mass timber goes into that project right there. And I know, especially with Denver's um, the municipality's focus on sustainability and uh, that that'd be interesting to see how mass timber plays into this project. And because there's so much construction that's going to happen, I mean, let's use numbers here. If it's 20%, let's say that they stick to that arbitrary metric going into this development of 600 and some acres. That's a lot of mass timber.
Speaker 2:Well, it keeps getting deeper. I mean, obviously, we know, well, if you know, you know there's this really cool company called Meow Wolf, M E O W Wolf, like you know, howling wolf, and there are these like, there are these like complete immersion, um, artistic, the one in Denver. It's like going into a hundred different rooms and every single room is this different world put on by an artist. So it's truly like, so like, lose yourself, mesmerizing. Yeah, and so KLNA engineers and builders. You know, Greg Kingsley, they designed that at. They were the engineers won a bunch of different awards Cause it like shoots through, it's like it's built. I'm talking, you might, you could reach out and touch the highway. You know they had to do some really interesting things on like actually how to build it. That was like the initial push of the river mile development down here. This is meow wolf, right here.
Speaker 1:So it's all the very corner of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you push out further here, it's called the sun valley.
Speaker 1:uh, sun valley development isn't that already going to be mass timber?
Speaker 2:bingo. What is its name? Oh man, I'll show you. So listen, you zoom out and even further. All of this is getting developed Now.
Speaker 2:Pcl Construction is the GC for a 550,000 square foot residential mass timber complex. That's going to go right here. I believe it's going Okay. Do you see these industrial smokestacks? You see how it's casting a shadow? They're scraping this right now. These are the smokestacks. You see how it's casting a shadow. They're scraping this right now. These are the smokestacks.
Speaker 2:It's not even a quarter of a mile to the broncos stadium, where I just was, and there's 550 000 square foot mass timber residential complex going there. So when it's done so, the ascent in milwaukee is 25 stories, right it. So when it's done so, the ascent in Milwaukee is 25 stories, right, it's the. It's the tallest in the world. That's all fine and dandy.
Speaker 2:When this is done now might not be the tallest, which is cool, but it will be the biggest per square foot by you know, per square foot in the United States, which is a massive accomplishment, a feather in the hat. That's one of four projects moving forward in the Denver area, of just these mega projects. And so, because of these threads, of the people who are already building this vision, this 10 to 20 year division KLNA we just talked about. On our last timber trending, they just did the aura project in snowmass, which is two hours away, the one that sold it for 11 million dollars for the five bed condo at 2700 excuse me, 2700 square feet. So like there's this common thread that weaves all through denver and, um, probably so you know, if we're a bet man here there's going to be mass timber in this develop, in this mile coming down the road.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's awesome. I can't wait to see that happen. I mean, obviously we're talking about, you know, a decade worth of work, but that's, that's a lot of. That's a lot of project getting built. So it's like we're always going to pop up right away. So I hope people dig a little deeper into that and see what's going on, because that could be exciting for mass timber. Yep, denver's developable square footage by 40 is what they're going to increase.
Speaker 2:It's like that's a 40 increase of a of a downtown, you know, a major metropolitan sprawling area yeah, dude, that's awesome. I'm excited, yeah, all right, what do you got partner?
Speaker 1:You and I have talked about this a little bit before, but I can talk about it now because they just went live today, which is Monday the 4th. But, speaking of Greg Kingsley and KLNA, at our last conference, at the end of his presentation there was a thread, a question, a challenge, if you will, that he issued about who is solving this mass timber core system, like your stairs, your elevators, in this space. Because nobody's doing it yet. And as an engineer, I've been looking for it and, funny enough, carpentry Plus was in attendance and they said let's talk. We're working on something so fast forward several months and it's now public.
Speaker 1:But they have put together these modular CLT and glulam core systems and this is what's unique about it. So most mid and high rise buildings use some form of concrete or steel core system, and even in mass timber buildings, right. So they use like a hybrid approach. They use CLT, glulam for everything else and then they use concrete and steel for these cores. But, depending, there's different methods to building concrete cores. Some are faster, some are slower. You can get prefabricated concrete core systems, but then you have to truck giant concrete, preformed concrete slab into place, which is heavy, and then you gotta have a big crane to lift it in. What these guys have done let me share my screen here is they've developed a modular system. So it rolls in on a flatbed, it's pre-assembled, you pick it off the crane and you set it down in an hour per floor. So, like normally concrete takes like well, let's see per floor, how long do you think that concrete if you're going to cast in place or whatever it would take to do a core?
Speaker 2:Per level. I mean you're talking about how long per day per level?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, like you know, one to two weeks. I'm not huge into concrete, but I'm guessing you know?
Speaker 1:no, you're, you're right. So if you were to do like a five-story building, that could take several weeks, right? So you're talking like, depending on the systems you use, uh, anywhere from a day on the fast end to multiple days per level, right? So if you're doing a five, six-story building, like do the math, these can do six stories freestanding and you just crane them in like right up top to six stories. And so let me show you a picture of what these things look like.
Speaker 2:It's pretty 10 weeks down to one, one to two days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like a day, right? So if you do like, let's just say you do an hour per per pick and set. You know you could basically have six stories of freestanding CLT stair cores ready to go and you and you and you can cap it off right as you go. So if you don't want to do all six stories at once, you can put a little lid on it and then keep it sealed in from the elephants or the elements, not the elephants, that'd be weird. You do want to be careful? Yeah, now, elephants are a unrealized construction site hazard risk that most people don't look at. But anyway, the elements wind and rain or whatever you can put a lid on it and let's say you want to do two stories the next day, you just pop that lid off, put the next two modules on, put the lid back on and you're done. It's pre-finished on the inside. All you got to do is like screw in your handrails, right?
Speaker 2:And so this is what these things look like. Yeah, let's see this stuff. I heard there was rumors out there. There was like a buzz of like this new product coming around, so I'm so stoked to check this thing out, okay, so now I can see it. I can see your message.
Speaker 1:Literally, these things just stack one right on top of the other.
Speaker 2:Where are you looking at this?
Speaker 1:So I got these directly from Carpentry Plus Nice, from the team over there.
Speaker 1:You can see the stuff on stuff on their website, but I asked for a high viz image so that we can share it online so, carpentryplusinccom, let me just double check and then here's another view of these things, so you can see the the 3d renderings and see how they just you got your your pre-prepared site and then just crane round right in there, and the great thing is, you don't even have to have like mass timber crews that are experienced with the install to use these, and they don't have to go just in mass timber buildings Like. You can use these in a steel structure, a concrete structure, whatever, and use a hybrid system, and so it's also a great way for people that are not experienced with mass timber to get a little taste of it.
Speaker 2:This is huge. This is absolutely huge, and so people can go to carpentryplusinccom to check out more. You also have this really cute little puppy and kitty thing up there. A little alert.
Speaker 1:Oh, on my screen share. Yeah, we'll crop that up. I don't know why that popped up. And then they also have a standalone website specifically for this product called timbercorecom. That's what this product is called, timbercore, and I wanted to play a video for you guys, just showing you what it's about. So russ, their uh ceo president, uh is featured in this. I just want to see what you guys think.
Speaker 3:Let me know if you can hear this nick timbercore is a revolutionary modular stair core system designed to elevate your construction projects from the ground up. Timbercore is pre -engineered, arriving on-site ready to go. Each module can be installed in about an hour, allowing your team immediate code compliant access to all levels of the job once the foundation is set. Safety is at the forefront of our design. Each TimberCore system is seismic, wind and fire rated, providing strength and reliability. Our system is crafted from sustainably sourced materials here in the US, supporting eco-friendly building practices. Best of all, TimberCore can freestand up to six stories, balancing beauty and structural integrity. Timbercore is a faster, safer and more sustainable stair solution. Elevate your build with TimberCore.
Speaker 1:And so it's going to be awesome. So, like the key talking points around this thing is it's fast, Like I said, you can pick them in an hour. It's sustainable. You can use SFI FSC source timber. It's all domestically manufactured and assembled trucks right into your site. You need no mass timber experience to install it. It cuts down on your uh, your GCs like onsite risk because you have a dried in, secure stair core all the way up to six stories. Right, you don't need to. You don't need any scaffolding or ladders or anything like that. Like it's just access right in there and then it's dried in, pre pre-finished, ready to go. Like I said, all you have to do is screw in a hand railing. That's pretty incredible. So I'm excited to see what these things take off and do.
Speaker 2:Go to carpentrypluscom real quick and just show people some of their other projects. They're the premier mass timber installer in the Pacific Northwest. I mean, they're the tried and true. They've been around since the beginning. They do mega projects and anything in between, but just true mass timber passion and the company and the family is just a set of just down-to-earth family values. You can't speak any higher about Russ and the company and the family and his and his son and every and the whole team. It's, it's really impressive. You can see it from a mile away.
Speaker 1:No, you're, you're absolutely right, and I think everything you just talked about leads into why they've got over 50 mass timber projects completed and for those people that may might not be in the industry so much, that's a lot, right.
Speaker 1:I think there's like less than a thousand mass timber projects, from the smallest to the biggest, all across North America or the United States, and so, like to have this many under one roof is awesome. Like, look at the square footage that they've done over a million square foot of install, so they know what they're doing. And so, through all the projects that they've been a part of, they're like, hey, this is something that needs to be out there because it doesn't exist yet. This is a cool project, the Julia West project so it's going to be the tallest building in Portland, I think, and it's 90 units of affordable housing. They just I think they just topped this out not too long ago, but they're a part of, like, all these new and exciting things because they have such an experienced, deep-rooted early adopter experience with mass timber, and so they're taking all that information, they're folding it into this SteriCore product.
Speaker 2:So this is going to sound so cheesy, but like they just care, they, they, you can feel it. They care and you know that's one. That's one of those buzzwords you know, I promise you. You know we care, but it's different with them. We can't recommend, you know, reaching out to them and you know talking mass timber. If you're into that world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then if you're in Denver funny enough, so one of your friends that you met a few years ago actually just started working with Carpentry Plus Jared Peterson. He's their contact guy in Denver. So if you want to tie CLT Glulam Coors to Denver, to River Mile, to Mass Timber, just bring in that whole team who's already making things in there. There's exciting stuff happening all over. So yeah, read in between the lines big Mass Timber stuff coming down into Denver, above and beyond what's already there, there's new products that are coming out and systems and solutions that are addressing the gaps in the market.
Speaker 2:It's just an exciting time to be in mass timber right now. See you next week, all right.
