Heritage Guelph wouldn’t agree Monday to give its blessing to the demolition of an 1890 factory to make way for a “Kiss and Ride” drop-off area for GO Train patrons to be built at the site south of the tracks.

“We have provided advice to city council,” but it’s up to council to make the final decision, Heritage Guelph chair Paul Ross said after the vote. “We have simply told city hall that there is merit in keeping the building.”

The issue will now go to a city committee next Monday and then to council on April 26.

Council’s critical vote will come just four days before the expiration of GO Transit’s offer to purchase the Hammill building complex on Farquhar Street east of Wyndham Street.

Unless council agrees to have the 1890 Cotton Mill building removed from the city’s Municipal Register for Cultural Heritage Properties on April 26, clearing the way for its eventual demolition, GO will let its purchase offer for the Hammill property expire, said GO official Greg Ashbee.

And if this happens, it jeopardizes all of the city’s plans to build a transit terminal on Carden Street this year, with two-thirds of the cost paid by federal and provincial infrastructure stimulus funding.

In order for this project to proceed, VIA Rail has to sell the city some land in front of the train station, which would be turned into bus bays. The land is now used for 45 parking spots for VIA patrons.

However, the meeting was told, VIA won’t sign off on the city’s design for the transit terminal unless vehicle traffic is rerouted south of the tracks –as it would be under GO’s plans for the “Kiss and Ride” lot on the Hammill property.

A refusal of VIA to sign off on the city’s current plan would require a redesign of the transit terminal, and this would mean it couldn’t be built this year, said Ashbee, manager of infrastructure expansion planning at Metrolinx, of which GO Transit is a division.

A motion saying Heritage Guelph wouldn’t object to the delisting and demolition of the Cotton Mill was decisively defeated at the end of a lengthy debate Monday.

Metrolinx-GO had already agreed to preserve the 1866 “Drill Hall” building on the Hammill site, and there had been talk of perhaps preserving the façade of the Cotton Mill facing the tracks. Heritage Guelph members suggested more might be done with the wall, such as attaching a rain shelter for GO patrons. But Ashbee, whose views were supported by city hall staff and consultants, told Monday’s meeting that it wouldn’t be possible to save the façade and still make the “Park and Ride” work well.

Coun. Leanne Piper, council’s representative on Heritage Guelph, voted with the majority of Heritage Guelph members when the issue came to a vote Monday. However, she indicated she might well vote differently when the issue comes to council. While the greater good is probably served by demolishing the Cotton Mill, serving the greater good is the role of city council, not of Heritage Guelph, Piper said. “The whole greater good is council’s role, not this committee’s,” she said.

If GO can’t build the sort of “Kiss and Ride” it wants south of the tracks, it has indicated it will probably abandon its long-term plans to have its station downtown. Instead, the train station could go south of the Silvercreek- Paisley intersection.