Story

Situated along Water Street which runs directly underneath the Whitehurst Freeway in Georgetown, citizenM will be an affordable luxury hotel with views of the Potomac River mere yards away. The original building, most recently a music venue, will partially remain as portions of the original façade and all of the second floor will remain as a nod to a building with a long history. As a result of maintaining this façade and the elevated concrete deck, great strides needed to be taken to maintain structural integrity while constructing a new building within an existing building. As much an archeological survey as new construction at times, MLDC moved across the 15,000 square foot ground level to find what structural elements existed below, and constructed whatever methods the engineer of record required to meet their design criteria for the building above. Originally designed to have simple footings and wall footings supporting new vertical elements above, MLDC adapted and ultimately poured more than 2,000 cubic yards of mat foundations, spread footings, pile caps, and wall footings to support new columns, shearwalls, and existing columns, all within an existing building. Utilizing shotcrete as a means of placement was key in placing concrete in the building as there was no way to get a concrete bucket into the area with the existing deck above. Upon completion of the ground floor slab on grade, MLDC progressed to the next challenge of retrofitting the second floor to enable the future construction of six floors of panelized structural panel decks. Alterations to the second floor required MLDC to retrofit existing beams, add new beams, and retrofit the existing columns to carry new loads. This required drilling for hundreds of new dowels in limited spaces while having the entire area framed and reshored to support the existing and new concrete. When all beam support was completed, MLDC eventually poured a new topping-like deck over the existing floor as a runway for the metal panel decks above to begin being erected. The final major aspect of work that MLDC partook in was the construction of shearwalls for stairs and elevators. The elevator shaft shearwall was able to be constructed as a self-supporting wall to final top of wall elevation well ahead of the surrounding decks due to the use of a Doka wall system. This allowed MLDC to complete shearwalls on one side of the building six levels above any other construction. At a glance, the citizenM project may appear to be small in stature and scope compared to other projects that MLDC has performed. The project instead exemplifies MLDC’s ability to adapt to circumstances outside of our control and still construct a quality product without sacrificing schedule or safety.