Sustainable Labs Gain Traction in Los Angeles & Orange County
By: Jerry Guerra, Principal, The JAGG Group
Taylor Design Principal and LA/OC I2SL President Enrique Ceniceros presents UCI's Wendell Brase with the 2023 I2SL Phil Wirdzek Leadership Award. (Photo courtesy of I2SL)
Southern California has grown into a global leader in the sustainable lab movement, which was underscored recently when the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) held its annual conference in Anaheim. The theme was “The Road to Decarbonization,” and the conference was hosted by the newly minted Greater Los Angeles chapter.
Architect Enrique Ceniceros, Taylor Design’s Director of Science & Technology, was a driving force behind the establishment of the chapter in 2022 and the I2SL event.
“The Greater Los Angeles region is host to some of the most diverse research and manufacturing facilities in the nation,” said Ceniceros, the chapter’s first president. “This cultural, geographical, and market diversity offers us the potential to achieve even greater heights as a community in the future.”
Greater Los Angeles is sometimes overlooked among the leading life sciences hubs in the United States. According to commercial real estate company CBRE, venture capital funding in the LA market increased from under $100 million in 2016 to nearly $1 billion by 2022. Life sciences employment and rental asking rates also rose notably in that time, CBRE said.
CBRE ranked Greater Los Angeles as the 8th-largest market for life sciences talent and the 6th-largest for National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in 2022. The metro area boasts four leading research institutions in UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, and Caltech, which received nearly $750 million combined in NIH funding in 2022. According to the county's Economic Development Agency, LA County is home to 2,890 life science establishments with direct and indirect employment of more than 190,000 jobs.
The five counties of Greater Los Angeles have also risen in the promotion of sustainability in life sciences construction and operations. The I2SL, an international network of lab designers, engineers, owners, operators, users, managers, vendors, and service providers, chose to locate its annual conference in the OC/LA region for the first time in its 20-plus-year history. This allowed attendees to tour the Chen Neuroscience Research Building at Caltech, the California Air Resources Board Headquarters in Riverside, and labs at UC Irvine.
Ceniceros adds that Los Angeles has the ingredients to be a top Life Sciences Real Estate market.
“All of the top U.S. markets are clustered around major research universities, and our exceptional institutions nurture and produce some of the top scientific talent in the world,” he said. “USC, UCLA, Caltech, CSLA, UCI, and UCR are a few that focus on scientific learning and research.”
Ceniceros had the honor of presenting UCI’s Wendell Brase with the 2023 I2SL Phil Wirdzek Leadership Award in recognition of the university’s pioneering role in energy-efficient lab operations. Brase, who joined UCI in 1991, created its Smart Laboratories Initiative with the goal of reducing lab energy use by 50 percent. He led facility staff in a program to identify opportunities to improve efficiency across the campus and developed a formal process for Smart Lab retrofits.
In addition to Taylor Design, founding I2SL Greater LA Chapter members are UCI, Caltech, DPR Construction, Cumming Group, ISEC, Critical Air Technologies, and WSP Global.
“I’m proud of the impact that we’re making on the emerging life sciences market of greater Los Angeles and the opportunity we have to positively influence the long-term sustainability of these critical facilities,” said Ceniceros. “Taylor Design has been incredibly supportive in helping to build this chapter, including posting on social media, recruiting sponsors, event planning, reviewing conference abstracts, and coordinating the opening night reception. Abdiel Mata of our staff has been a huge help with graphics and other tasks as well.”
Last October, the I2SL Conference was held in the LA/OC area for the first time. (Photo courtesy of Taylor Design)
For information about the I2SL, visit https://www.i2sl.org/, and to find out more about the Greater Los Angeles chapter, go to https://i2slgreaterlosangeles.org/.