Waterstone Properties Group announced that it had received a $250,000 Wood Innovations Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build the first commercial structure in Maine using cross-laminated timber.

The project is a 150,000 square foot office building with 30,000 square feet of retail space on the first floor. "Waterstone's goal is to help pioneer the commercial adoption of cross-laminated timber to and support the attraction of a CLT manufacturer to Maine," the company said in a press release. "The use of sustainably sourced CLT will also reduce the project's carbon footprint compared to traditional steel and concrete construction."

A recent study in the publication Nature Communications concluded that a shift of 90% of new urban population into wood midrise construction could save an additional 106 gigatons of additional CO₂ from entering the atmosphere by 2100.