1080 & 1090 Morrison Drive, Charleston, South Carolina
Fine Tuned Structure is the Structural Engineer of Record for this commercial development in downtown Charleston. The Architect of Record is the well-known local firm The Middleton Group. The general contractor for this project is Samet Corporation. The development includes a 110,000 square feet three-story main building offering prime office space, adjacent six-story parking garage, and a two-story mixed-used building. The type of the main building’s structure is reinforced concrete frame with post-tensioned flat plate concrete slabs featuring 16 feet floor height and up to 32 feet spans. The parking garage is a precast concrete structure. The smaller two-story building utilizes reinforced masonry in combination with Versa-Dek composite metal deck slab, and structural steel gravity frames. The site is adjacent to the Cooper River. The subgrade and the unique shape of the office building presented significant challenges to the design team. The risk of liquefaction in case of a seismic event is very high. The geotechnical engineer for the project estimated that potential liquefaction related settlements can be as much as 5”. For this reason, the design team selected to utilize pre-cast pre-stressed concrete piles with cast-in-place reinforced concrete pile caps, tie, and grade beams for the foundations of all three buildings. The project is located in an area prone to frequent hurricanes with high seismic parameters which put the buildings into seismic design category D. The construction began in the early 2021. The project was completed in the summer of 2023.