For years, the Port of Portland has worked to become a national hub for mass timber, a building material made from small pieces of wood that can sometimes offer a more sustainable alternative to steel or concrete.

That goal took a leap forward in 2025 when Swiss-owned Zaugg Timber Solutions agreed to sign on as a key tenant of the port’s mass timber campus at its former Terminal 2.

The campus is part of Oregon’s broader push to expand mass timber production, a move backed by a number of state entities and Gov. Tina Kotek, as a way to find new markets for the state’s timber and build affordable housing.

Now, a key part of that plan is under scrutiny after a coalition of environmental groups called on the Port of Portland to fully vet Zaugg and disclose details related to its lease. They say the mass timber project is being led by someone previously accused of mishandling a similar project in Washington.

In a letter to the port sent Wednesday, the 14 groups — including Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands and the Sierra Club Oregon Chapter — said Zaugg’s North American CEO was fired from a Washington state nonprofit, following allegations that a mass timber project he was in charge of misled local tribes, investors and the U.S. government in the pursuit of a multi-million dollar federal grant.

A Port of Portland communications manager didn’t answer OPB’s questions about that CEO, Tobias Levey, but stood behind the port’s relationship with Zaugg.

“After going through a thorough process and doing our due diligence, the Port found Zaugg and its owners met and exceeded these requirements,” Port of Portland spokesperson Kara Hansen told OPB in an emailed statement. “Zaugg is a 100-year-old family business with extensive experience in this type of modular construction, and we’re thrilled that their first U.S. manufacturing facility is in the process of opening here in Portland.”

Zaugg Timber Solutions — the North American affiliate of Switzerland-based ZAUGG — responded to OPB’s questions by email, saying it was not concerned about Levey’s leadership on the Port of Portland’s mass timber project. The company’s European headquarters didn’t respond to an email from OPB.

Some environmentalists question sustainability claims around mass timber, particularly when it comes from forests that may have been clearcut. Wednesday’s letter to the Port of Portland expressed concerns that “the Port has not properly considered the likely environmental consequences that increased mass timber production will have on public forests in the region.”

The groups behind the letter are raising these concerns now because they learned about Levey’s past recently, according to an official with Oregon Wild, one of the signatories to the letter. In addition to raising concerns about Levey’s credibility, the letter also criticized the port’s support for mass timber, and said that support aligns with Trump administration policies aimed at increasing logging in publicly owned forests.

Levey fired from mass timber project in 2022

Levey previously led an ambitious timber and housing initiative, called Forest to Home, for Seattle nonprofit Forterra NW. But in 2022, The Seattle Times reported that he’d been fired and that Forterra said it had “concerns he could not responsibly or effectively serve the organization’s mission”

Under Levey, the Forest to Home project sought to source wood from local forests, including the Snoqualmie Tribe’s ancestral forest. Small wood pieces would be laminated into mass timber products for modular, affordable homes.

The project hinged on timber from a 12,000-acre forest owned by the tribe, as well as a $20 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the Snoqualmie Tribe withdrew its support, accusing Forterra of misrepresenting how much timber could come out of a tribe-owned forest in the grant application and failing to consult with the tribe.

Forterra funded an investigation, which found Levey had led the grant-writing process and was the only staffer in direct contact with the tribe.

The investigation also concluded that Forterra’s grant application committed about $1.5 million in matching funds from the tribe, though the tribe never agreed to the match. Levey added the matching funds to the grant application two days before submitting it, according to the report, after other Forterra staff had completed their final review.

Investigators said they didn’t find direct evidence that Levey intentionally deceived the tribes or Forterra staff.

At the time, Levey told The Seattle Times: “I fully own my role as lead author and agree that I made mistakes without malice.”

Mass timber — opportunities and concerns

Mass timber was first developed in Europe in the 1980s, then started gaining traction in the U.S. around 2010. It’s now widely seen as a catalyst that can revive logging communities and the wood products sector. It’s also been embraced by Kotek as an element of the state’s push to build more housing.

The Port of Portland’s Oregon Mass Timber Coalition has brought together government agencies, universities and businesses to prop up Oregon’s logging and wood products industry through mass timber.

Part of that initiative involves turning the port’s former marine terminal into a mass timber research and production center, where it can ship and receive wood products and host businesses that can build modular housing to address the state’s affordable housing crisis. The Terminal 2 mass timber campus could also raise revenues for the port at a time when several of its income streams, other than airport operations, are decreasing.

But mass timber also comes with ecological debates.

It can make use of small-diameter trees, including trees logged during forest thinning projects that would otherwise not be profitable. It tends to generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions during production than building materials like steel or concrete.

But those environmental benefits can be negated if the wood comes from clearcut forests. Experts with Yale University’s Office of Sustainability say that simply replacing concrete or steel with mass timber doesn’t make a project “sustainable.” Other factors need to be considered, including where the wood came from and how that forest was managed.

Some environmental advocates, including Oregon Wild, have accused mass timber projects in the Pacific Northwest of sourcing wood from clearcut forests.

Port of Portland executives have also made lofty claims about the airport’s mass timber ceiling. Although executives have said they can look at the roof and “identify where each of these pieces came from,” a 2025 OPB investigation found that only about 30% of that wood is traceable, and some of it may have come from clearcut forests.

Editor’s note: Curtis Robinhold, executive director of the Port of Portland, is an OPB board member.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/29/port-of-portland-zaugg-mass-timber-tobias-levey/