A confined site in an historic district challenged the design and construction team to come up with a unique parking solution for Publix Supermarkets’ new 39,000-square-foot Greenwise Market in South Tampa’s Hyde Park, designed to blend with the charm of the surrounding neighborhood. Two full floors (200 spaces) of elevated parking with pedestrian escalators, 10-shopping-cart-capacity elevators, and a custom cart conveyor, are suspended over the upscale ground-floor market, fitting snugly into every inch of usable space within the store’s precast concrete frame. The team succeeded in delivering an open structure for the parking floors, with old-fashioned, atmospheric details including faux storefront openings, decorative grills, balconies, and Bahama shutters.
By using a total precast structural solution the construction speed was increased over convention construction by 30% while minimizing the disturbance to the surrounding neighborhood. The crane was able to sit within the footprint during construction for the project, eliminating the need to shutdown any of the adjacent roads on all four sides of the urban site. Integral casting of the thin-set brick into the precast panels eliminated the need for numerous masons and exterior scaffolding, which would have increased the disruption to the neighborhood. In addition, precast helped reduce interim financing because of its faster construction speed which aloud Publix Supermarkets, Inc. to open sooner and begin generating revenue faster.