Campus Expansion

From blighted land to community asset 

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A 30-year community vision takes shape

Over the next decades, OSU-Cascades will expand, creating a 128-acre campus for up to 5,000 students. The transformation of the university properties — a former pumice mine and former Deschutes County demolition landfill — is one of the most innovative university development projects in the country. While expansion will be slow — perhaps one building every two years — our goal is to share the story of the development and the ways we will minimize its impact on our surrounding community.

Watch the webcams

During reclamation work, crews removed material from the mine, processed it, and created structurally consistent material to refill the former mine. The sheer faces of the sides of the mine were re-sloped to improve access, which also provided fill material to raise the floor of the mine, as much as 40 feet in places. Raising the floor of the mine also involved the adjacent and former demolition waste landfill, which yielded clean soil and rock.

Student Success Center Webcam

 

Innovation District Webcam

 

Award-winning campus plan

The campus long range development plan earned an award for innovative design from the national Society for College and University Planning.
It outlines the transformation of underutilized land into a campus that meets the needs of future generations, emphasizing:

  • Connections to the community
  • Social, economic and triple net zero environmental resiliency
  • Central Oregon’s flora and fauna, and community health
  • Interdisciplinary learning, entrepreneurship and innovation

Economic Impact

Dining on Campus

Campus operations and construction — and the economic ripple effect they create — will bring more than $273 million to Oregon in 2034.

A Community Campus

outdoor seating

Campus plans include 10 miles of walking and biking trails, an amphitheater, recreation fields, food venues with outdoor seating, an Innovation District and mid-market affordable housing.

A Net Zero Campus

solar panels

We envision a campus that pushes the edge of the sustainable built environment frontier and provides students with extraordinary opportunities to shape a thriving community, on and off campus.

Using the landfill to fill the pumice mine

  • Engineers from OSU’s renowned College of Engineering contributed to the site remediation plans.
  • By using soil from the landfill to fill the adjoining pumice mine, the number of truckloads of external material will be reduced by an estimated 30,000.
  • The first building on the reclaimed land will focus on STEAM  - science, technology, engineering, arts and math.