Lab Leaks: How Biotech Buildings Face Flood Risks From Climate Change

The still-growing life sciences real estate market is facing an increasingly common and costly threat to property of all kinds: natural disasters.

And since many of the core markets for life sciences in the nation are on the coasts, these properties will specifically deal with challenges related to intensifying rainfall, sea level rise and flooding due to the impacts of climate change.

Rising waters likely translate to rising costs. 

Forecasts for increased climate risk, which vary wildly and may be conservative as the globe warms faster than expected, are pushing developers to invest more heavily in resiliency, increasing costs for new lab space and requiring retrofits for existing facilities, as they pursue development in already-established coastal hubs. 

These added costs, along with considerations like pricier insurance policies, come on top of the usually more complex and expensive development process required to construct a lab than a typical office or industrial property.

“Parts of Boston really are uniquely vulnerable to coastal flooding, both inundation and stormwater and precipitation,” said Kate Dineen, president and CEO of A Better City, a nonprofit focused on sustainability and the built environment in the Boston region. “The risks are really quite striking. There are some neighborhoods that have extreme vulnerability, like the Seaport.”

Bisnow examined the flood risk profiles of a handful of new and under-development properties in three key life sciences markets: South San Francisco, the Boston Seaport and Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Kendall Square. Utilizing the Risk Factor tool from First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that provides climate risk modeling for corporate clients and federal government agencies, a selection of sites in these markets were found to have significant risk.

Each of these submarkets contains considerable lab square footage as well as new development. Cambridge boasts more than 20M SF of lab space, the Seaport contains 5.2M SF, and South San Francisco, the birthplace of biotechnology, has more than 11.5M SF in operation. DivcoWest's Cambridge Crossing project was also designed with the city's 100-year storm elevation in mind, and features stormwater management and landscaping to address climate-related risks.

In the Seaport, Beacon Capital’s 2 Harbor and Lincoln Property Co.’s Seaport Circle both scored an 8 on the tool’s 10-point scale for flood risk, considered a severe risk. In Cambridge, the new Moderna headquarters by Alexandria Real Estate Equities and the Cambridge Crossing megaproject by DivcoWest scored a 6, representing major risk. In South San Francisco, Kilroy Oyster Point from Kilroy Realty Co. and IQHQ’s Spur Phase 1 both scored a 6. 

All of these scores reflect the projected risk of the site itself, not the buildings, which all have municipal approval. Developers often make investments in resilience and flood protection for new projects in light of these risks, as well as new building codes. 

Located on the waterfront in the Boston Seaport, 2 Harbor was built with the city’s 2070 flood projections in mind. The lobby and all building and mechanical systems were placed at least 4 feet above the existing grade in anticipation of flooding. 

In Cambridge, the recently completed Moderna HQ, a site roughly 1.5 miles inland that isn’t at risk of storm surges, was designed and approved with city flood projections in mind, elevating all entrances and critical infrastructure above the projected 100-year precipitation elevation, an estimate of an extreme rainfall event. 

Alexandria also said in its 2021 environmental, social and corporate governance report that it “will require the development of strategies to strengthen resilience in some buildings in our operating portfolio over time.”

“For buildings that are slightly below current or future flood levels, or near high-hazard burn zones, mitigation may include emergency preparedness, along with nominal capital improvement work. Other buildings may require more significant planning and investment to incorporate more complex resilience measures such as relocating equipment or altering building facades.” 

Many municipalities, including Boston and Cambridge, have released extensive reports on flooding risk and have embarked on plans to invest in neighborhood-level infrastructure and resiliency projects. Cambridge has embarked on regional coastal flood interventions to protect the Kendall Square and Massachusetts Institute of Technology neighborhoods where labs cluster.

Dineen said that Boston, Cambridge and the state of Massachusetts have “made tremendous strides when it comes to planning for climate impacts and flood risks,” but the region hasn't moved from planning to implementation and shifted from property-level work to neighborhood-level commercial and residential protection. 

Many neighborhoods in Boston won’t see significant changes in flood risk for 20 years, said Ariane Laxo, sustainability director and vice president of architecture firm HGA, which may seem like a long time. But if intervention only progresses on a building-by-building level until that point, regional flooding may still present a significant impact, even if individual buildings are well protected. 

“What's the point of having a running building if people can’t get to it?” said Samir Srouji, design principal at HGA.

There is also the challenge and cost of mitigating risks for older buildings. Older lab stock consists of eclectic building types and highly specialized mechanical and power systems that need to be protected and often lofted above projected floods, a challenging and potentially expensive process. It’s a costly investment that becomes especially important for research facilities, Laxo said. People are still using budgets from a few years ago that don’t account for the added cost of hardening facilities or investing in backup power.

“It’s a pretty significant return on investment if you can prevent the loss of millions of dollars of long-term research because a lab flooded or you lost your mechanical unit,” she said.

Laxo said that while building to existing flood projections and building code requirements is important, it is also worthwhile for lab developers and landlords to think about the changing nature of risk. Boston University, which sits in a particularly flood-prone region, has released its own building standards, which take a much more cautionary approach to resiliency and placing electrical and mechanical systems higher.

“Often, risk models only look at past flooding records, which potentially underestimate true risk because of the exponential impact of climate change,” Laxo said. 

UPDATE, JAN. 19, 4:30 P.M. ET: The story has been updated to include information provided by DivcoWest after publication.