SACPA dives deep into whether old buildings should be preserved

Why should we bother to save and celebrate old buildings in Lethbridge, even if they are historic? That was a question that was posed at a SACPA session Thursday in Lethbridge. George Kuhl and Ross Kilgour dissected the topic during SACPA and talked about why it’s so important to keep our history alive.

“There’s often a conflict between do we save a building or do we tear it down and build a new building? And when you look at the balance between social, economic and environmental values, there’s often a clash between those. But if you have a sensitive developer, someone who really loves the building, like Hunter Heggie, for example, he basically saved the Oliver Building from demolition. That is a true example of how a really neat old building can be brought back to life,” says George Kuhl, the chair of the Historic Places Advisory Committee.

The Senior Community Planner for the City of Lethbridge, Ross Kilgour, added his sentiments on the preservation of old landmarks, “Yeah, and you can look at Fort Macleod just to see how preserving their Main Street has really benefited their economy, with all the film shoots and everything that happened there. So there can be big economic benefits as well to heritage preservation.”

The City of Lethbridge has plans to implement a new Heritage Management Plan. Local historians say it should help preserve the history of our historic areas along with including our region’s Indigenous heritage.