Architecture Firm Acquired by Another Firm, Backed by Private Equity
Date Posted: September 24, 2024
Posted In: News, Organizations,
From St. Louis Business Journal: A St. Louis architecture firm has chosen to be acquired by a private equity-backed national architectural platform, as a form of succession planning.
Hastings + Chivetta Architects of St. Louis has been acquired by Grace Hebert Curtis Architects, or GHC, an architecture, engineering and consulting firm located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, GHC announced this week. The firm also operates another office in Texas.
GHC made the acquisition with funding from its backer, Bernhard Capital Partners, a private equity management firm focused on services and infrastructure. Bernhard Capital in late 2022 launched a dedicated architecture, engineering and consulting, or AEC, platform at the same time it invested in GHC.
In the two years since, GHC has acquired a number of firms in the AEC space, including BSSW Architects, BTA Associates and Hahnfeld Hoffer Stanford Architects.
As part of those efforts, GHC and Bernhard Capital approached Hastings + Chivetta, which specializes in higher education and private K-12 education and has worked on more than 230 of those projects across the country. The St. Louis firm, ranked in the top 300 in national firms, had not been looking to be acquired, said Principal Chris Chivetta, 62, whose father Tony Chivetta co-founded the company in 1960 with his friend from Washington University’s School of Architecture, Bryce Hastings. The elder Chivetta died in early 2022. The younger Chivetta has worked in the firm since the early 1990s.
Combining the companies seemed to make sense in a number of ways, Chivetta said.
“We’re an acquisition, but we’re also a partnership,” Chivetta said.
The architecture company will continue to operate under its existing name and out of a standalone 20,000-square-foot office building, owned by Hastings + Chivetta, at 2464 W. Port Plaza Drive in Maryland Heights, Chivetta said. The firm moved into the office in May 2019. The company’s existing 40 employees will remain working in St. Louis, and the operation of the company will essentially remain the same, he said. The firm has added architects in the months leading up to the sale, he said.