The UO’s Lundquist College of Business will move the Oregon Executive MBA Program and sports product management initiative to a new building in Portland’s Old Town Chinatown. The new White Stag Innovation Lab is a space for teaching, product development, prototyping, and materials research. The facility has equipment ranging from 3-D printers to sewing machines for the design, innovation, and making of prototypes by students in the program.

The UO will be an anchor tenant in a $37 million, six-story structure to be built on the corner of Northwest First Avenue and Davis Street, across the street from the White Stag Block. The new structure will be the first all timber-frame building constructed in the city of Portland in the last century. The project is a collaboration with Ankrom Moisan in Portland.

The university is working with the development company Gerding Edlen and its CEO, Mark Edlen, on the project, which will continue the wave of urban renewal in Portland’s Old Town district. Edlen said the design of the building will be “unique and highly sustainable.” Gerding Edlen specializes in socially responsible, sustainable, community-focused buildings. 

Faculty members in business and product design are crafting new master’s degree programs to be offered by the University of Oregon. The Sports Products Initiative will offer two new degrees. The first to launch in fall 2015 will be sports product management and will be offered by the Lundquist College of Business. Then in 2016, a master’s degree in product design will be offered by the UO’s Product Design Program in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Oregon is the nation’s leading hub for the sports products industry. The sports product management master’s program will contribute to the pool of talent available to professionals in the field of sports product design and manufacturing. 

The new site, expected to open January 2016, will house the expanded sports product management program. That initiative has already held several sold-out workshops in Portland and is expected to receive approval for a master’s degree program this fall.

The move will put the new programs in the same neighborhood as other UO programs, including those offered by the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, School of Journalism and Communication, School of Law, Academic Extension and the Library and Learning Commons.

“We have the opportunity to serve as a catalyst for long-term renewal,” Edlen said. “The Lundquist College will be an excellent neighbor to existing organizations and businesses, just as the programs in the UO White Stag Block have been since it opened. We look forward to playing a part not only in expanding the UO presence in Old Town Chinatown, but also building up the community feel of an already fantastic Portland neighborhood.”

Above: The design of the new building will be “unique and highly sustainable,” said Mark Edlen, CEO of Gerding Edlen, which specializes in socially responsible, sustainable, community-focused buildings. Photos by Sabina Poole.

Above: Kate Wagle, associate dean for Portland programs in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, leads a group to tour the new White Stag Innovation Lab, a key facility for the sports product initiative.