Located more than two miles from Boston Harbor, the Sherman Building on Newbury Street seems like an unlikely candidate for flood damage. Yet owner Kensington Investment Co. isn’t taking any chances.
As it restores and expands the four-story structure for a new Room & Board furniture store, Kensington is spending $2.5 million to rebuild utilities and move critical systems from the basement to the roof.
“The infrastructure in Boston is so old and in a lot of cases so outdated, you see more building owners immediately agreeing to spend the extra money to relocate utilities,” said John Grady, project manager of mechanical, electrical and plumbing for Commodore Builders of Newton, which is overseeing the project. “You didn’t see that attitude in the past.”
Studies of rising sea levels in the wake of Hurricane Sandy have made believers out of owners of commercial property in coastal cities, who are taking steps to anticipate floods. In Boston, mean sea levels are projected to rise two to six feet by the end of the century. Flood waters during a Sandy-like event at high tide would inundate much of Back Bay, not to mention direct coastal areas of downtown, South Boston, East Boston and Charlestown, according to the city’s climate preparedness task force.
The Sherman Building is located within a seven-and-a-half foot flood plain, an area that would be flooded in a Sandy-magnitude storm if sea levels rose 2.5 feet. According to a report by the Boston Harbor Association, the affected area comprises more than 30 percent of the city, including a disproportionate share of commercial properties.
Examples of the building community’s response to the forecasts are on display at 375 Newbury St. Nearing completion, the renovation project places HVAC and electrical utilities in a double-redundant waterproof enclosure on the building’s rooftop. Water infiltration sensors would trigger an alarm and send emails to the building owner and facility manager, and the vault is equipped with flood pumps.
“These safeguards are real. They do add cost, but you can sleep at night and know if there’s a storm, you don’t have to babysit your electrical vault,” Grady said.
Designed by The Architectural Team of Chelsea, the building’s new utility system also incorporates features designed to mitigate its own contribution to flooding in the neighborhood. Collected stormwater discharges directly into storm drains, rather than combined storm and sanitary sewers. That reduces the building’s footprint in flash floods such as one that occurred in July 2010, dumping an inch of rain on Boston in 30 minutes. Combined stormwater and sewer pipes were overloaded, flooding basements in Back Bay.
The potential effects of a coastal storm have added a new wrinkle to cost-benefit calculations for new construction. Electrical transformers and back-up generators are among the most costly equipment, said Kishore Varanasi, director of urban planning at CBT Architects in Boston. But replacement costs for fire pumps, for instance, appear to be less than the cost of elevating them.
“It’s a piece of equipment that may be okay to sacrifice, and there are many examples like that,” Varanasi said.
Removing utilities from basements has to be weighed against the cost of placing them in otherwise valuable upper-floor real estate, sacrificing rental revenues, he said.
Preparing For A Warmer Planet
The larger issue of climate change is also prompting architects to consider ways to mitigate heat waves. Some office and high-rise apartment developers are considering operable windows to provide ventilation during blackouts, Varanasi said.
The feature was incorporated in Partners HealthCare’s new 262,000-square-foot Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, which opened last August in the Charlestown Navy Yard. Designed by Perkins + Will Architects of Boston, the facility has roof-mounted primary electrical services powered by a fuel pump encased in a flood-proof vault.
HVAC systems have become smaller and more efficient, but buildings are being equipped with more cooling power to prepare for a warmer planet, Grady said. The average temperature in Greater Boston has risen approximately 3 degrees since 1831, according to records kept by the Blue Hill Observatory. The average number of 90-plus degree days in Boston could rise from 10 to between 31 and 62 per year by the end of the century, according to a report released in October by the city of Boston’s Climate Preparedness Task Force.
“They’ll design buildings to put double- and triple-cooling loads in them to anticipate (rising) heat,” Grady said.
Email: sadams@thewarrengroup.com
