By Charles Lefebvre

Petition asking company to preserve Riverside School building during development

Aug 2, 2018 | 5:45 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Several community residents are hoping a petition will help keep the Riverside School building standing for years to come.

The petition, launched earlier this month, has already collected more than 400 signatures, both online and in person.

The goal of the to “demonstrate a community interest in Riverside School through comments and signatures” and “request that Covenant Health/Covenant Care preserve the original Riverside School building within their architectural plans for the proposed site.”

“Legally speaking, Riverside School is not a designated heritage building, so the purchasers of this property have every right to do whatever they want with the building,” said Safira Lachapelle, who organized the petition, along with Nicole Nemo. “We think it’s an interesting question when a building that’s been public for 102 years becomes private. There’s a lot of history here that we want to make sure is captured.”

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Covenant Care purchased the property earlier this year from SD76, and plans to build a seniors’ residence or a long-term care facility.

“Our ultimate goal when we started to do this was to see the original 1916 building preserved and incorporated into Covenant Care’s future design plans,” said Nemo

While collecting signatures for the petition, Lachapelle says many people have been concerned about how the neighbourhood is changing.

“The flood came through, they lost the school, the pool,” she said. “There’s a real community interest in seeing this building either restored, or preserved, or also elements of this site, because it has been there for so long.”

CHAT News reached out to Covenant Care for comment, but they did not respond by our deadline on Thursday. Lachapelle says Covenent Care has been open about wanting to engage with the public about the new facility as they develop their plans for the site.