Every now and then, a seemingly straightforward precast concrete project puts our team to the test, and the Liberty University East Campus parking deck in Lynchburg, VA, is a perfect example. This 656,684-square-foot parking structure was required to be built directly into the side of a large hill. On top of the challenging location, the deck also needed to seamlessly blend with the surrounding campus and offer a hyper-efficient layout with 2,100 parking spaces — all while being completed on time and within budget. Luckily, these are the kinds of challenges our engineers live for.
Owner
Liberty University
Architect
Baskervill/RBT
Contractor
CMA
Location
Lynchburg, VA
Building this structure in the side of a hill presented a wide range of structural and logistical challenges. First, trucks and cranes would have difficulty getting in and out of the project site, which could significantly impact the project’s timeline. Second, Tindall needed to develop a solution for transferring lateral loads to the shear wall elements. To overcome these challenges, Tindall engineers spent more than a year working with the other project teams to develop a unique lateral load resisting system. The final solution was to tier each bay so that each level went deeper into the hill than the bay before it.
This precast solution eliminated the need for cast-in-place construction, saving the owner considerable time and cost during construction. For architectural features, Tindall used two pigmented concrete mixes, an acid-etched finish, and thin-brick accents. In the end, the effort of our engineering team during the preconstruction process helped provide Liberty University with a feat of modern engineering on time and within budget.
