Push for Preston Springs review dropped, but more heritage cash from Cambridge council
City has been 'consumed by the talk of heritage and the loss of heritage,' Coun. Jan Liggett says
The City of Cambridge has decided not to have an external audit conducted over the demolition of the former Preston Springs hotel late last year, but council is supporting staff recommendations to focus on protecting heritage buildings going forward.
Council supported a motion Tuesday night to hire a new heritage planner and provide $30,000 for a grant program through the municipal heritage advisory committee. The grant funding is an increase of $15,000 from what was budgeted, but will be paid for through reserve funding.
Coun. Mike Devine questioned spending money on a new heritage planner during a pandemic but Coun. Jan Liggett said the city needs another planner to protect historic buildings.
"We have been consumed by the talk of heritage and the loss of heritage," she said.
"This is something we need to get on with, we need to go forward with, there is no time to delay on this sort of thing because these properties get torn down, development happens," Liggett added. "We need to protect the heritage of this community."
No Preston Springs audit
Later in the meeting, Liggett withdrew her motion to ask for an external audit of the demolition of the former Preston Springs hotel. The hotel was demolished in December after an emergency order was issued by the city's chief building official.
Coun. Donna Reid serves Preston and the property where the Preston Springs was located is in her ward.
Prior to the meeting, Reid told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo she did not support an external audit because the cost was unknown and audits in other communities have carried multi-million dollar price tags. Reid said it was also entirely possible the report wouldn't tell councillors anything they didn't know. She said the city has released all the information it can starting with paperwork from 1990 to present day so the community can understand what happened.
"An inquiry is certainly a very costly thing to engage in," she said. "It seemed to me that we shouldn't be spending millions on looking at what happened when we already know."
Instead, she said that kind of money could be better spent doing an audit the city's remaning heritage buildings.
"We as a council, we care about heritage," Reid said. "I know that all of us on council take a great deal of care in what happens to our buildings."
Future heritage work
During the meeting, councillors discussed changing how city staff go about adding buildings to the city's heritage registrar. Staff said that approaching home and building owners earlier than they have previously, even if they don't have all the details about the history of the building, might lead to more buildings being added to the registrar.
The city is also already undertaking two heritage conservation district studies, starting with the Galt core and followed by east Galt area.
A staff report noted the city has plans to study:
- Whether to implement a heritage permit system.
- The capital maintenance schedule for city-owned heritage buildings with a report expected later this year
- The heritage master plan in 2022.