In February, Midas Construction completed a $47 million, 170-room extended-stay hotel in the heart of Clayton. The Residence Inn by Marriott is the first new hotel built in Clayton since 1990.

The hospitality project was initially designed in 2019 as a fully volumetric modular building that would have been the tallest such domestically built modular structure in the U.S. But the pandemic’s chokehold on materials availability, paired with a major spike in trucking costs, pressured the team to rethink project delivery.

Initially the 12-story project was intended to consist of two floors of concrete podium and 10 floors of fully modular rooms above that. But when the pandemic hit in March 2020, an integral components factory shut down, trucking costs soared and workforce became restricted. Quick, detailed dialog with the project’s engineering consultant, SSC Engineering, and its subcontractor Ceco Concrete reconceived the future Residence Inn by Marriott build as a post-tension, cast-in-place concrete structure with cold-formed metal studs. The team was able to eliminate a great deal of pricey structural steel and met the City of Clayton’s requirement and cantilevered the building, adding wings to it so it would conform to the curve on Forsyth Boulevard at that location. Reworking the structural grids and switching to cast-in-place concrete kept the project on track within two months of the original start date.

Beneath the former structure that had been demolished at the site were approximately 80 drilled piers. Within two weeks Midas and partners provided new drilled pier foundation designs to mobilize and complete that piece of the project sooner before finalizing building design. The tight site proved to be another formidable challenge. Two 15-story office buildings bookend the Residence Inn site and three active parking garages sit directly behind and next to the office towers. Continual vehicular traffic pours along Forsyth. Midas stored a lot of materials atop the parking garage located directly behind the jobsite and relied on a lot of just-in-time materials delivery.

Castle Contracting served as the design-build contactor, providing civil engineering for the site as well as demolition, earthwork, structural excavation and site utilities installation.