Regina City Council voted unanimously to approve nine properties for heritage designation following the largest request of its kind in the city.
Jackie Schmidt of Heritage Regina presented a report to approve the application for designation of each of the following addresses as a Municipal Heritage Property. She said designation of a heritage building is determined by many factors besides age such as structure and architectural significance.
“It’s time to break the barriers of modern heritage,” said Schmidt during city council meeting.
“Heritage comes in all style, sizes, shapes and eras.”
Coun. Bob Hawkins (Ward 2) encouraged council members to approve the designations as a lot of time was spent on carefully following expert advice and looking at examples in other cities.
“What I do think is important is that we protect the heritage process (and) the evaluation process,” said Hawkins. “I encourage council to approve these designations or to put another way, to deny these designations should require a very compelling reason given that we have expert opinion and recommendations on this.”
There were two votes that occurred. The first vote involved eight properties for which council gave unanimous approval. However, the Prince Charles apartment property located at 2121 15th Avenue, received eight votes in favour while two council members – Daniel Leblanc (Ward 6) and Landon Mohl (Ward 10) – voted against designation approval.
Coun. Lori Bresciani (Ward 4) questioned what the total property tax revenue from all the properties would be.
The City of Regina revitalization manager Emmeline Hill said over a 10-year span, there would be $2.3 million of property tax revenue from all the properties.