Biodiversity Research Institute expansion on track
Rendering / Courtesy American Building Group
Biodiversity Research Institute’s expansion is the lighter-shaded building, added to the existing building.
Construction of a 5,400-square-foot expansion at the Biodiversity Research Institute in Portland is two months ahead of schedule.
“I hope to be moved in by the end of July,” said David Evers, the institute’s founder,
The expansion, at the institute’s 276 Canco Road campus, broke ground last November and reflects the conservation research nonprofit’s gradual but steady growth in recent years
In 2024, the staff grew from 51 employees to 60. There are five positions open. Evers said he expects to hire another 10 to 15 people in the coming year.
The added space will have 18 offices, staffed by employees who have already been hired but are working remotely from locations across the U.S.
Evers said he prefers to have staffers in-person and that the new hires are ready to move to Portland.
“We are still growing so we will fill the offices immediately,” he said.
The project has been modified a bit over the months.
“We have a dedicated freezer room for long-term sample management,” said Evers. “For example, we have biotic tissue samples from the late 1990s that we are using to assess PFAS levels in the past.”
The city of Portland helped finance the expansion and leverage further investment through bank partners by issuing a commercial loan from the Portland Development Corp. Coastal Enterprises Inc. and the U.S. Small Business Administration provided assistance.
Evers, a conservation biologist, founded the nonprofit institute in 1998 to assess emerging threats to wildlife and ecosystems through collaborative research. Scientific findings are used to advance environmental awareness and inform decision-makers.
The institute has a nearly $10 million annual budget, four centers of excellence and 16 research programs. Its scientific research spans over 50 countries on five continents.
The expansion is expected to cost close to $3 million, Evers said. The institute has been at the location for a decade, leasing at first and now owning it.
American Building Group, a construction company also at 276 Canco Road, is handling the project. Whipple|Callender Architects in Portland provided the design.
The need for more space is driven by expanded demand for services in several of the institute’s revenue hubs, he said.
That includes consulting government and commercial entities on potential offshore wind sites to identify those with minimal impact on marine life; projects in the carbon credit market that help identify benefits to habitat and communities; and work related to ecotoxicology and contaminants.
Evers said he doesn’t expect the work to be significantly impacted by funding uncertainties at the federal level.
“We purposely have a relatively small, but important, connection [to] the federal government,” he said. “We have been impacted, but in a way that we can pivot to other projects while some federal projects are on pause.”
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