The Town of Banff has approved a new heritage policy and within the changes residents may note there are fewer historical resources listed.
Development planner Jennifer Laforest presented the updated policy to council on Aug. 14 and provided details on major changes incorporated into the document.
A significant change, and an encouraging one, said Laforest, was inclusion of board members from the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies and the Eleanor Luxton Foundation for the Banff Heritage Corporation.
“The new policy and the current policy encourages participation within the board structure,” Laforest said. “The recommendation we put together is basically twofold; first, that council endorse the appointment of a member of the Eleanor Luxton Historical Foundation and Whyte Museum.”
Other policies follow an approach that differentiates between heritage and non-heritage properties, whereas Banff’s policy ranked heritage resources based on a scale of importance.
Laforest said the new policy moves away from that ranking system and the document clarifies and creates more consistency in the language used to identify, protect and commemorate historical properties.
As a result, she said, members of the public might notice that formerly ranked ‘C’ and ‘D’ historic resources are no longer listed. The focus instead is on heritage resources that met ‘A’ and ‘B’ level ranking in the former document.
Other changes to the 2003 policy include updating it to align with provincial and federal policies related to heritage conservation as well.
“This policy definitely didn’t come out of nowhere, both changes to the provincial and federal polices related to heritage conservation … were incorporated into as much of this framework as we could,” said Laforest.
“The Heritage Corporation was involved in quite a lot of discussion around how to make sure the provincial and federal framework is adapted in the context of Banff.”
The two documents used are Alberta Culture’s Creating a Future for Alberta’s Historic Places Toolkit and Parks Canada’s Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada.
The policy also sets out financial incentives for heritage designation of properties considered significant. The financial compensation guide was removed from the policy by motion at the Heritage Committee meeting earlier this year. The policy was also changed to address reconstruction and relocation of heritage assets given recent proposals to reconstruct the pavilion in Central Park and relocation of the ice box from CP Rail lands, for example.
The Heritage Corporation was established in 1996 as a non-profit that manages financial incentives and historic designations of property in Banff.
