Hempfield Area School District is looking for a new architect to work on its high school improvement project after the Bellevue-based firm that worked with the district since 2022 resigned.

The school board Monday approved the resignation of Core Architects and approved seeking other architecture firms to work on the project.

Major renovations at the high school that have been talked about since 2020 were halted when the first phase of bids were opened last summer and came in millions of dollars over budget because of inflation and labor shortages.

Interim Superintendent Kimberlie Rieffannacht said the firm submitted its resignation last week.

“We’ve had conversations recently about where we were at with the project, and after those conversations, they did submit their resignation,” she said. “It’s very amicable. We still have a great relationship with them, and we are going to work on the transition, and we’re going to be looking for that new member of our team.”

The district needs to have an architect on board to move forward, Rieffannacht said.

“To say we are going to go back to this point or that point, or we have to do this or that, it’s hard to articulate that without the whole team at the table. Until we have that whole team established, we can’t project the exact path forward yet,” she said.

Core Architects was hired in February 2022, in the early stages of the high school renovation project’s planning.

The company previously worked on a yearlong feasibility study to look at Hempfield Area’s physical, educational and functional needs.

Ryan Pierce, managing principal at Core Architects, said he did not have any comment on the firm’s resignation.

Updates on project

The project’s construction manager, SitelogIQ, was hired in January 2022 and remains a part of the project.

Last year, the school board hired an owner’s rep, McKinley Architecture and Engineering, to help the district navigate the process after the estimated cost of the high school revitalization rose by more than $16 million to $150 million.

The district extended McKinley’s contract at the meeting.

School board members previously criticized SitelogIQ for not anticipating the cost would skyrocket.

SitelogIQ vice president Garrett Lewis told the board the district needs to seek grant money or make changes to the scope of the project to make it affordable.

Rieffannacht said the district “needs to rightsize the whole project,” including the team involved.

“When we establish that team, we can establish what that programming time looks like, what our next step looks like, and how we are moving forward tangibly with the project,” she said.

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