Politics

Trade group honors HHS project as best in the Carolinas

Pictured with a 2023 Pinnacle Award for the design, renovation and expansion of Hendersonville High School are, from left, Vannoy vice president Brian Walker, commissioners Michael Edney and Rebecca McCall, Vannoy project manager Erin Renwick and LS3P architect Maggie Carnevale.

By Bill Moss, Published: March 26, 2024

The $62 million renovation and expansion of Hendersonville High School won a 2023 Pinnacle Award for Best Building Project from a construction industry trade group.

Executives Erin Renwick and Brian Walker from Vannoy Construction and LS3P architects vice president and principal Maggie Carnevale presented the award to Henderson County Board of Commissioners during its regular meeting on March 20.

The Carolinas Association of General Contractors presented the award to the HHS project from among all nominated jobs across North Carolina and South Carolina costing more than $5 million. Entries were judged on unique aspects and challenges, special values, project management, budget and schedule, and safety performance.

“What really set this project apart was the cooperation and coordination that everyone involved in the project shared on a daily basis,” the contractor said. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools in March 2020, the construction-design team thought “out-of-the-box” to accelerate the work, resulting in a finish 11 months ahead of schedule and $1½ million under budget.

Team partners besides the Board of Commissioners, county staff, Vannoy and LS3P included MB Haynes Corp., the School Board and school administrators, HHS administrators and faculty, WGLA engineers and many local trades and vendors.

“For well over a century, Hendersonville High School has served as a point of pride for the community,” the Pinnacle Award citation said. “When it was time to re-imagine the next life for the existing facilities, Vannoy was tasked with preserving as much of the school’s history as possible.”

Among the notable achievements of the project were preserving

the historic 1926 Stillwell Building and auditorium, leaving two areas unfinished to display the terracotta block originally used on the walls and ceilings, building a “Learning Stair” that connects the gym to the lower level of the addition, reusing stone from the original building on the new monument sign and the football press box and giving wood from the old gymnasium floor to shop students to build bench seating.

By pivoting to the speed-up in an unexpectedly vacant building, County Manager John Mitchell said, the county saved time and money.

“We recognized an opportunity during the shutdown to expedite the work. That's based in large part upon the contractor we had and the architect,” he said.

“I'm sure everyone in the room will remember what happened in the months preceding the shutdown, where construction prices in many cases doubled and the ability to secure goods also vanished,” he added. “So it's entirely possible had the board not taken advantage of that opportunity and had we not had the contractors we had in order to make that happen that we would have been in the inverse position, where our subcontractors would not have been able to honor the prices that they gave.”