Grasslands is a Lennar community on Sunshine Way in Foley, Alabama, in Baldwin County about ten miles from the Gulf. It is the largest of the three Lennar Gulf Coast mail centers Mitchell Metals delivered in this period.

What back-to-back buys you

A back-to-back configuration puts two rows of cluster box units spine to spine down the centre of the structure, with a single roof over both and a central line of posts carrying it. Eighteen boxes in a single-sided run would have needed something close to sixty feet. Back to back, it is thirty-two — roughly half the length, half the concrete, and half the frontage taken out of the streetscape.

The trade is depth. At 9′ 6″ the structure is deeper than a standard or cantilever cover, because it has to shelter two rows of boxes and leave a working aisle in front of each. On a site with room that is a straightforward exchange; on a tight infill lot it would not be.

Why the posts are 6×8

Baldwin County sits on the Alabama coast, and the design wind speed there is in a different band from inland Georgia. The response was not a different canopy — it was the same pre-engineered system with the posts stepped up from 6×6 to 6×8. That is the advantage of engineering a product line rather than a one-off: the structure that answers a higher wind load is the structure you already build, in a heavier section.

Mitchell Metals supplied the cover only at Grasslands. The frame is extruded aluminum, so nothing rusts — which matters within ten miles of the Gulf. It is engineered to ASCE 7-16 wind and snow loads and designed to meet ADA and IBC requirements, with cluster box placement following the USPS Builders/Developers Guide.