Veterinary Students To Use new Learning Center

Portland - The Oregon Humane Society will build the first Animal Medical and Learning Center in the United States that incorporates a university veterinary program with on-site animal care. Skanska USA Building will serve as the construction manager and general contractor for this unique project. Oregon State University college faculty will be based on-site and students will live in dormitories in the new facility, providing 24-hour care for OHS shelter animals. Ground breaking on the $6.4 million project is scheduled for June, 2006.

For the first time in its 137-year history, the Oregon Humane Society will be able to provide on-demand medical services for animals in its care when the new Center is completed sometime in early 2007.

Water Bureau Moves Forward with Master Plan

Portland - The Portland Water Bureau will demolish the Westinghouse Building and the on-site fleet garage canopy that provides covered parking for maintenance vehicles.

Demolition will take place in late spring as part of the bureau's plans for the Interstate Field Operations Center. The space will be used for material storage and a water quality swale. The canopy is being demolished because it does not meet current seismic standards.

Animal Forensics Lab Expansion Includes Public Education Garden

Ashland - Part of the expansion at the wildlife forensics laboratory in Ashland, Ore. will be a scientific garden used to teach the public about forensics work.

The garden, or some kind of public education project, was a requirement from the city of Ashland, before it would issue a building permit for the $10 million expansion.

The lab hit on the idea of a scientific garden, said Ed Espinoza, assistant director. He cited as examples a garden at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology based on mathematical equations and another at Cornell University based on wavelengths.

A University of Oregon landscape architecture class will design the project. The students have come up with ideas, such as flowing grasses that look like zebra stripes, sculptures to mimic the bones of a poached whale, or a pond like a cache of smuggled caviar.

The expansion includes an additional 25,000-sq.ft. of laboratory, storage, and office space to supplement the existing 23,000-sq.ft. crime laboratory facility.

Some of the existing space will be rehabilitated in order to modify the existing criminalistics laboratory for DNA analysis and to convert the HVAC controls to an electronic system.

It is the only comprehensive full-service wildlife crime laboratory in the world.