Story

The Camille is a 14-story, mixed-use high-rise development in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. The community’s residential floors offer studio, one-, and two-bedroom layouts across 181 units. Featuring 16,000 square feet of retail, a ground-floor fitness center, a rooftop penthouse, a club room, and a business center with private workspaces, The Camille encompassed a wide scope of work. Complementing its urban setting, the building's façade comprises a combination of brick, metal panels, full-height windows, and an Exterior Insulation Finishing System. The project team built a meaningful mid-block passageway to enhance accessibility to The Camille’s retail frontage and connect the residential area west of the community with the expanding downtown, enriching the pedestrian experience and providing direct access to a major artery, commercial activity, and transportation. The community boasts a Walk Score® of 97 thanks to its access to the Bethesda metro station and booming office sector. From a project logistics perspective, construction was incredibly challenging. The Camille’s high-density site posed spatial constraints during construction—it shares a zero lot line with retail buildings to its North and South façade, along with significant elevation changes between its high-traffic frontage and residential posterior. To combat these challenges, the project team diligently coordinated day-to-day activity and hired a BIM modeler to model the site utilization plan in 3D, helping subcontractors understand site logistics. This assisted in keeping the project on schedule despite the lack of laydown or staging area and only a single point of access for transporting materials. With garden-style apartments abutting the West façade, the project team also kept the surrounding community well-informed of all building efforts, maintaining a community website to provide building updates. In addition to implementing strong project management to maintain the project timeline, the team applied a variety of innovative construction efforts. The Camille was a local trailblazer in implementing shotcrete foundation walls, a cost-effective installation method that combated the site’s space limitations. Adherence to the Bethesda Downtown Plan Design Guidelines presented an opportunity for innovation as well, leading to the redistribution of the massing which not only created a strong visual identity, but enhanced the effectiveness of unit layouts. The project also faced a variety of unforeseen conditions, posing major construction challenges. Hard rock was hit in the underpinning pits required to support the existing retail adjacent to the new construction. The rock sat approximately 10 feet higher than the original Geotech reported, and the pits needed to be completed before mass excavation. The project team worked tirelessly to track this unforeseen condition delay and finish the project on time. They turned over 11 floors at their first turnover milestone, as opposed to the required eight, and turned the entire building a month ahead of schedule. The Camille was completed both on-time and under budget, attributed to the team's astute planning and perseverance despite challenges the project posed.