City mulls arguments on designating swales a heritage site

It could be a long, winding road before the Northeast Swale and nearby Small Swale become a heritage site.

Saskatoon city council listened to speakers both for and against making the 26-kilometre section of native prairie a heritage site during its planning, development and communities services meeting on Monday.

Councillors heard a recommendation from the municipal heritage advisory committee to designate the land a heritage site.

Committee chair Lenore Swystun said the intention of bringing the matter to council was beginning the process of seeking designation.

“Our sense was that the city, because of the uniqueness of the area and the fact that they’ve done a bunch of work on it, was to flag it for designation at some point,” she said following the meeting. “The expectation was just to put it on the radar and keep watching it.”

Council accepted the report as information, stating that plenty of other work surrounding development in the area needs to be sorted out before conversations on heritage site status can continue.

The move could be seen as a way of stopping or altering a previously agreed-upon plan to build a Saskatoon freeway bypass through the area.

Andrew Shaw, research and policy analyst with the NSBA, was also at council to stress the business association’s thoughts on the recommendation.

“We don’t want the Saskatoon freeway project to basically be put on the back burner or stopped because council has determined the entire swale is a heritage site, and that it can’t be tampered, built around or (built) through,” Shaw said.

Swystun said intervening in projects isn’t her committee’s intention.

“Saskatoon has already said (the swale) is important. We’re already seeing it evolving over time, so this isn’t an ‘either-or’ (situation), it’s an ‘and’ (situation),” she said of the changing area.

“We have development going on in the area, we have roads that have been constructed, we have just opened a new bridge that crossed the swale, so obviously those things aren’t being stopped.”

Shaw said he isn’t against conserving the area. He’s worried about the proposed route, which the city and province have agreed on, being affected.

“We wanted to get out in front of this idea that there will be no construction through it at all,” he said.

Typically when a building receives heritage designation, it is protected from changes or major alterations.

While Shaw estimates the freeway project is at least 10 years away from completion, a heritage designation could happen a lot sooner and risk the project altogether.

Planners are currently working on a freeway functional planning study that is narrowing down an exact route. Shaw is weary of any heritage designation nullifying the work done up to this point.

“The work is being done now, so a roadblock like this now could be the death of the project,” he said.

Council discussed having a member of the municipal heritage committee present on the technical working group committee that will represent the city and plan work on the bypass.