Nine31 Apartments
McClure was honored with Third Place in the Residential/Hospitality category of the 2025 Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute (CFSEI) Design Excellence Awards for our work on Nine31 Apartments in Gainesville, Florida.
This 10-story cold-formed steel (CFS) structure sits atop a 3-story post-tensioned concrete podium. McClure joined the project after podium construction was complete, stepping in as the specialty CFS engineer amid quality concerns and budget challenges. With a fast-tracked timeline, McClure redesigned the system to work within existing conditions.
The McClure team navigated pre-installed embed constraints by engineering overlapping shear walls and using a rigid diaphragm model to distribute loads while keeping reactions under a 50-kip limit. McClure also performed a 3D scan of the podium that identified high and low elevations on the podium slab that was significantly out of level. McClure then developed a lightweight, grout-filled bearing system using oversized CFS tracks with an adjustable shimming method that eliminated the need for a heavy leveling topping slab.
Additional on-site challenges, including misplaced embeds, unlevel embeds, unaligned slab edges, and overhanging wall panels were resolved with the use of the 3D scan. Proactive detailing and close collaboration with the project team along with McClure’s cold-formed steel expertise helped bring a complex high-rise structure to the finish line.
About McClure
Founded in 1956, McClure has grown to a firm of over 280 professionals in fourteen offices. With a vision of making lives better, McClure brings engineering and development expertise with a collaborative approach to identify the best strategies and solutions to bring our client’s vision to life. We look at every project through the lens of economics by thinking, designing, and building for the future. McClure’s expertise is in guiding clients on making long-term capital investments in the areas of aviation, bridge, community development, construction observation, development, environmental and stormwater, landscape architecture, structural, survey, traffic and safety, transportation, wastewater, and water.