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MHPP Projects

The Municipal Heritage Partnership Program (MHPP) helps Alberta’s municipalities identify and protect locally significant historic places.

The MHPP assists municipalities undertaking any one of three types of heritage planning studies. The MHPP will help a municipality:

• identify potential historic places through a survey,
• understand what about each of its historic places is unique and valuable through an inventory;
• develop policies that protect and conserve their historic places through a management plan.

This page briefly explains the purpose, process and goal of each type of project.

Survey

For municipalities planning to protect their historic resources, a key first step is identifying what buildings, structures, landscapes, and places could contribute to their local heritage. A municipal heritage survey is a community-based project that gathers information about potential historic resources within your jurisdiction.

Photographs are taken and basic information regarding a site’s architecture, age and history are recorded using standardized survey forms. In the case of municipalities where no heritage programs currently exist, a survey is most often the best place to begin. Gathering this baseline can help a municipality understand what types of potential historic resources it has, what location and context they are in, and what the scope of its overall heritage program should be. A professional heritage consultant is often engaged to facilitate the survey process, ensuring all the elements are completed according to timelines.

A municipal heritage survey provides an excellent opportunity to involve community volunteers to help find and document potential resources. A comprehensive survey ensures that important, but perhaps lesser known, resources do not "fall through the cracks," but are identified for possible protection as potential historic resources. The survey acts not only as a catalyst to a strong heritage program and can also be useful in other municipal planning activities at the municipal level.

Inventory

Often, the best second step in growing a strong heritage program is to create a municipal heritage inventory.

An Inventory identifies places the community values and wants to preserve. During inventory, a researcher writes a Statement of Significance for each site. The statement describes why the community values the place and what about it needs protection to preserve its significance. Once a site is inventories, the municipality has the information needed to designate it as a Municipal Historic Resource.

The community, with the assistance of a researcher, writes a context paper. The paper describes the people, events and themes that are significant to the community. The community’s heritage advisory board then selects sites the might be associated with these themes. A researcher evaluates each site on the Places of Interest List. He or she writes Statements of Significance for each place associated with a theme identified in the context paper. The sites are assessed for historic integrity to ensure that there is still something to preserve.

A survey provides a municipality with a list of all the sites worthy of designation as Municipal Historic Resources. It will also create the documents needed to designate the site and list it on the Alberta Register of Historic Places.

Management plan

Increasingly, municipalities are recognizing the value of protecting their heritage. But how does the stewardship of historic places relate to the other issues and processes involved in municipal governance? A municipal heritage management plan is a document that assists and guides a municipality's stewardship of its historic resources, usually by developing both policy and strategy. Tailored to the unique needs of a municipality, a heritage management plan can be effectively incorporated at a variety of phases in the program. A management plan can capture policy, guidelines, incentives, and strategy for implementation according to your local requirements.

Creating a heritage management plan generally is a collaborative process involving many stakeholders. Support from the Mayor, Council, and municipal staff is essential for the plan’s development and implementation. Participation from a broad range of municipal departments such as planning, infrastructure, parks and recreation, and economic development enhance the management plan's applicability and scope. Preparation of a management plan is specialized work and normally requires the expertise of a heritage professional. It functions as a strategic tool to guide practices for heritage planning and conservation in a municipality.

Designation and mandatory documentation

Municipalities in Alberta are empowered by the Historical Resources Act to designate historic places through the passage of a local bylaw that legally protects designated resources from demolition or alterations which takes away from its heritage value. For information on creating local designations please see the designation section.