Executives at Lifetime Fitness in St. Louis Park, Minnesota needed to create a new parking structure close to their facility. Their on-site surface parking quickly filled up, requiring members to be shuttled from an offsite lot. To change this, a total-precast concrete parking structure was built on the parking lot in three months.

The design for the four-story building’s total precast concrete structure comprised double tees, beams, columns, hollowcore plank, solid slabs, spandrels, precast stairs and walls. The precaster fabricated and erected all of the components. A burnt-orange thin brick was embedded in the architectural spandrels to complement the fitness center’s brick facade.

The structure was erected in only three weeks to bring it on-line as quickly as possible. Using one crane, crews worked two 8 ½-hour shifts each day. The components were delivered and picked from the truck to alleviate congestion and speed erection. Lifetime Fitness executives have used precast concrete systems for a number of their recent facilities, so they were familiar with its capabilities for this parking structure.

The 122,000-square foot facility not only provided a key amenity for members but expanded parking capabilities from 619 cars to 842 cars. It is a total precast parking structure built to meet the facility’s parking needs and complement the existing fitness center building, and includes 312 pieces (116,372 sq. ft.) of precast.