TIM BROOKS

Tim Brooks, the “brook” in Winterbrook, is a cofounder of Winterbrook Planning, along with Greg Winterowd. Tim brings the environmental and resource planning side of the company into full focus. His 35 years of diverse experience includes managing comprehensive natural resource conservation and management plans, conducting environmental inventories, and developing natural resource programs and policies for numerous Oregon communities from Portland to Pendleton, from The Dalles to Medford. Tim has a long history of using his professional planning and environmental skills in a volunteer capacity to support important community projects, such as his work for Oregon Harbor of Hope, Portland Audubon, and Leach Botanical Garden.

“It’s probably fitting that I am the ‘brook’ in Winterbrook. My specialty is environmental planning, and I spend a lot of time ‘brookside.'”

Tim holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Reed College, and a Masters from The Conway School where his professional focus became landscape architecture and planning, and his personal passion became the art of balancing the built environment with natural resources. After Conway, he decided to revisit his ancestral lands and continue his landscape architecture studies at the Århus School of Architecture in Denmark. While there, Tim was offered a position at the Århus Nature Department, where he worked on neighborhood park designs and developed a phased restoration plan for a 1,000-acre historic marsh area that had been drained and converted to farmland. Upon returning to Oregon, he became a Portland City Planner, and began what became a decades long relationship with the Leach Botanical Garden, where he has done everything from plant cataloguing and research to garden master planning. After working for the City, he spent several years in environmental science consulting, and sparked a relationship with Greg Winterowd, which blossomed into the environmental and land use planning company Winterbrook Planning.

In his downtime (if you can call it that), Tim is conducting “riparian research” while rafting the rivers of Oregon, telemark skiing in the Cascades, and taking his dogs (Chula and Viggo) hiking and rafting with him wherever he goes. 

Representative Projects:

Leach Botanical Garden
Tim led the land use and environmental planning tasks for the Upper Garden Development Project at Portland’s Leach Botanical Garden. The project team, led by Land Morphology, developed plans for new botanical collections, a new facility entrance, and new buildings including a visitor center, education building and greenhouses. Winterbrook Planning prepared the consolidated Conditional Use, Environmental, Tree and Adjustment application, which was approved in 2017. Previously, Tim assisted with programming, design, and natural resource planning for the 2010 Leach Botanical Garden Master Plan. His involvement with the garden dates back more than 30 years: he prepared an inventory of the garden plant collection, cataloged the collection, designed plant labels, and served on the garden’s Education Committee for many years.

Portland Natural Resource Plans
Tim brought his environmental and design background to bear on a pressing City planning need to comply with statewide goals for natural resources. He led a series of five legislative conservation plans, covering distinct areas of the City.  In the process, Tim met with many of the City’s neighborhoods and found broad support for urban greenspaces in the process.

Smith and Bybee Wetlands Comprehensive Natural Resource Plan
Tim led a team of planners and designers to prepare a Comprehensive Natural Resources Plan (CNRP) for the 2,100-acre Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area in North Portland. Building on the work of an advisory committee, the plan includes a range of recreation, restoration, and infrastructure projects. Winterbrook Planning prepared the environmental documentation, impact assessments and assisted with the design of key recreation projects, including the Regional Trail and Bridge. He also prepared the CNRP land use application (the first such application in the City).

The Winterowd and Brooks families together in the 2000’s