Known as the City of Roses, Portland, OR has become a thriving center of arts and culture (it’s known by many microbrewery fans as “beervana”). In 2011, the city’s new Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise, the Portland Timbers, played its first league game (the Timbers had a previous incarnation in the North American Soccer League in the 1970s). The team’s stadium, which had been previously named PGE Park, had been renovated to accommodate a soccer pitch. Jeld-Wen, a Charlotte, NC-based manufacturer of doors, windows and related building products, was founded as a millwork plant in Klamath Falls, OR, and paid homage to its heritage by obtaining the naming rights for the Timbers’ revamped stadium. Downstream, a Portland-based, environmental-graphics firm, designed the project.
Peregrine Sports, LLC, the Timbers’ ownership group, hired Portland-based Security Signs to fabricate the stadium’s sign package, which features lively mixture of 3-D letters and digital graphics. Security fabricated the 5-in.-deep letters from 0.125-in.-aluminum, which was routed on the shop’s MultiCam 3000 CNC router and formed on its Arete Corp. iBend and RAS Turbobend Plus equipment. Fabricators illuminated the push-through letters from all directions with white, interior LED modules from SloanLED, and, for exterior uplighting through the main sign’s “C” channel, Allanson’s LEDSaber, a tubular system that emulates fluorescent lighting and operates on a 24V, DC system.