This document presents a modified carry select adder (CSLA) architecture to improve efficiency over a regular CSLA. The modified design replaces one of the ripple carry adders in the CSLA with a binary-excess-1 converter to reduce the number of gates. Simulation results show the modified 16-bit CSLA has fewer gates and offers advantages of lower area, power and complexity compared to a regular CSLA design. The modified architecture provides an efficient alternative for low area and low power VLSI implementations.