(West Des Moines, IA) — U-S Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says a central Iowa construction project shows the potential for a building material called mass timber. Its layers of wood, are compressed and nailed or glued together, so they can bear more weight. Vilsack says mass timber can be made from the smaller trees the U-S Forest Service plans to remove from millions of acres of federal land over the next decade. He visited the site of the Junction Development Catalyst in West Des Moines on Friday, a building for commercial and residential tenants that’s made of mass timber. The project received a nearly 250-thousand-dollar federal grant and construction should be completed this fall.
