Regina’s city council has deceived to remove the heritage status of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church.

The vote came after the Anglican Diocese of Qu’Appelle, which owns St. Matthews Anglican Church, asked the City to rescind the church’s heritage status so the building could be repurposed into a community hub and mixed-use rental housing in the Al Ritchie neighbourhood.

The current structure and foundation of the building require extensive repairs that involve removing and rebuilding sections or all of the church’s structure.

The estimated cost to repair the church back in 2018 was $3 million. In 2022, engineers advised that the diocese plan a budget of $75,000 per year for regular maintenance.

The church, which sits at 2165 Winnipeg Street, was built in 1926 and is a piece of “gothic revival” style architecture. The red brick façade, stone accents, stained glass windows, and the land it sits on are considered significant to the City’s heritage.

In the report to the city council, the Al Ritchie Community Association said that they would not object to the removal of designation from the church on the condition that the church does not intend to sell the property to a developer but to salvage materials from the building and use in a future development that supports the community.

With the designation removed, the City will have to draft “a covenant agreement” with the diocese that will create salvage and documentation protocol for heritage materials and ancillary agreements.