Building tours start at the Denver Art Museum. Transportation provided. Meet at the front entrance for check in at 10:30 AM on Wednesday August 19th.‍

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Step inside the City of Boulder's Western City Campus, an adaptive reuse project, and the first mass timber civic project in Colorado to source a significant portion of its wood fiber in the CLT from in-state forests.

This 117,000-square-foot municipal facility proves that the greenest building is often the one already standing. By retaining roughly 41% of the existing structure and adding a 62,000-square-foot mass timber expansion, the project team is cutting embodied carbon by an estimated 73% compared to new construction. On this exclusive tour, you'll hear straight from the project teams who made it happen; the architects, engineers, and builders, as they reveal the big wins, the hard lessons, and the behind-the-scenes decisions that brought this hybrid vision to life.
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What makes this project stand out?

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Approximately 50% of the wood used in the CLT is sourced from Colorado, with a new mass timber panel layup developed specifically for Colorado's fiber basket

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A hybrid structural strategy that pairs the existing steel-and-concrete frame with three new mass timber wings, a CLT roof, salvaged steel from the original hospital, and low-carbon concrete.

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A fully electric design supported by a rooftop solar array projected to supply nearly 40% of the building's annual energy needs and deliver 81% energy savings over the 2030 baseline.
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Your guides from Saunders Construction, Timberlab, and Anthem Structural Engineers will unpack how they tackled the structural, demolition, and coordination challenges unique to grafting a mass timber addition onto an existing building, including how they sequenced partial demolition around new timber wings, and coordinated a hybrid steel-and-timber load path between the new and old buildings.

Plus, they'll share how this project is setting a new precedent for adaptive reuse, regional fiber sourcing, and civic-scale mass timber across the country.

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If you want to see how adaptive reuse and locally sourced mass timber can work together, and walk away with practical lessons for your own projects, this tour is a must.

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