Aging lion statues to be placed at West LRT stations

Three aging lion statues that were once part of the Centre Street Bridge will find new homes along the West LRT.

Four lions, made in 1916, were removed from the bridge during a renovation because they were crumbling and replaced with new ones.

One of those old lions guards the municipal building, but the other three have been slowly disintegrating in storage.

A council committee approved the plan to pull the lions out of storage and use them as public art along the C-Train line.

City council will discuss the plan later this month.

Ward 6 Ald. Richard Pootmans says he is pleased the links to the city's past will be back on public display, but he says it's not up to council to decide where or how.

"We are not curators, so I think that it's appropriate that we do not get involved in how they'll be positioned or sited," he said. 

"I can imagine there might be some engineering issues, they're going to be very heavy, whether or not they can be located just anywhere we think it might be a good idea, it's probably going to be subject to some understanding of what's exactly below the surface."

The plan calls for preserving one lion as it is today, using parts of another and potentially putting a third under glass so it can be left to age in place.

There is no firm figure on the cost, but restoring the concrete felines could run close to $1 million.

The money will come out of the fund set aside for public art projects along Calgary's newest C-Train line.