A local landmark is changing hands from The Kamloops Heritage Society to the city but the non profit still wants to run the show.

St Andrews on the Square has been run by the Society for over two decades and they’d like to keep running the church with the city maintaining it.

While on the NL Morning News, deputy mayor Mike O’Reilly pointed out the transition has been in the works for several years. “This isn’t something new.”

“This is something that’s been worked on for five years and more recently again when, you know there was an agreement extension and said okay, this is what’s happening, we’re going to be reviewing everything in 2018 and we’ll go forward. And again, this was council’s decision.”

O’Reilly said the city has to do what’s best for Kamloopsians. “We think that this is what’s best and when we say it’s a city owned building, this is a taxpayer owned building. And we, again we want to celebrate that culture and heritage that we have and want this building to used by the most people possible.”

O’Reilly said buildings like the 132 year old church are something they take very seriously. “We put the money in that’s needed.”

“If you look at that cigar factory building, you look at the courthouse where we put an elevator in a heritage building so that it was accessible for people to use the top floor. These heritage buildings aren’t something we take lightly.”

The Society and the city are meeting on Friday but O’Reilly expects things to move forward as planned with the city operating the building.