Funding the Oregon Sustainability Center may prove to be as difficult, or more, as designing it.

"We're in the midst of finding the resources to get it built," Portland Mayor Sam Adams said in a recent interview with Architectural Daily.

Adams, along with a delegation of high-profile green advocates from Oregon, is in Washington, D.C. this week lobbying for money to help build the $120 million center.

To be sure, a lot is riding on the success of the Oregon Sustainability Center. Designed to Living Building Challenge standards -- the most arduous in the sustainable design industry -- the Sustainability Center will be a showcase for Oregon innovation.

But city and state officials will have to lobby hard to gather public funding for an ultra-sustainable building in the midst of a severe downturn in the building industry.

"Our intent is that sustainability will be the organizing principal of our economic strategy," said Adams. "We want Portland to be known as the North American hub of clean technology and sustainable design."

"The Oregon Sustainability Center will be on the leading edge of innovation," he added. "It will be a prototype, which means it will be more expensive."

Of the $120 million needed to build and design the center, $82 million has already been secured in the form of bonds by the state of Oregon. The city of Portland has offered the land and an additional $5 million in tax increment financing. An additional $38 million is needed from public and private funders.

Once up and running, the building will also need to prove its economic sustainability. About 140,000 square feet will be office space, 31,000 for exhibit and common space and 17,000 feet of conference and class rooms. There will also be 8,000 square feet of retail. Tenants will include 1,000 Friends of Oregon, Earth Advantage, Green Building Services and the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies.

The center's top floors will have non-profit, government, academic and business tenants working to promote sustainability.

Joining Adams in D.C. will be Portland State University president Wim Wiewel, Nancy Hamilton of Gov. Ted Kulongoski's office, Janet Gagnon of Solar World and a group of civic entrepreneurs including Mark Edlen, CEO & President, Gerding Edlen Development Co. On Jan. 25 and 26, the group will meet with officials from the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, Housing & Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Green Building Council.

A reception on Jan. 25 at the U.S. Green Building Council's headquarters, sponsored by the Portland Sustainability Institute, will highlight the building and Oregon's leadership in sustainability for a small group of officials within federal agencies, the White House, area foundations, trade associations, and non-government organizations.

As a triple net zero building, across water and energy use and carbon emissions, the OSC is designed to achieve LEED Platinum and the world's most rigorous certification protocol, the Cascadia Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge.

But Adams said the building will be "more than a couple heads and shoulders above LEED platinum, by re-using water on-site and depending on renewable resources such as solar and wind.

"It will be locally sourced, local built, locally designed, locally engineered -- and show the world what can be done," said Adams. "It will be the only one of its size in the nation. Nothing will even come close."