PUBLIX GREENWISE

Background

Publix decided to launch its GreenWise Market concept to offer a one-stop shopping destination for organic, all-natural, and earth-friendly products. The GreenWise Hyde Park store offers upscale products, a café with coffees and smoothies, curbside service for prepared meals, a mezzanine with seating, and a wi-fi network.

The store features nearly 40,000 square feet of retail space on the ground with two-levels of structured parking above the store. Oversized elevators, escalators, and cart conveyors transport customers to their vehicles enclosed in a two-story glass atrium.

The project utilized precast concrete for its structural and envelope systems. This reduced the overall construction time and provided the structural versatility to meet the project demands. The façade of the structure included embedded thin-brick and ceramic tile, as well as several other treatments to help the structure blend into the community. The vented louvers and faux windows provided enough ventilation that the parking structure was considered an open design and did not require additional venting equipment.

By using a total precast structural solution the construction speed was increased over conventional 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 shut down any of the adjacent roads on all four sides of the urban site. The 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 allowed Publix Supermarkets, Inc. to open sooner and begin generating revenue faster.