A leading voice for heritage protection in Winnipeg says a decision to demolish the Public Safety Building is a dangerous one, and acknowledged it will now take a miracle to save the 51-year-old structure.

City council's heritage and downtown development committee endorsed a plan to demolish the building that currently houses the Winnipeg Police Service, which is in the process of moving its operations out.

The committee based its decisions off a report from consulting firm Deloitte, which suggested the limitations of the building "make it unsuitable for a significant and costly restoration project."

Cindy Tugwell, the executive director of Heritage Winnipeg, said she hoped council would examine the issue in greater depth, and said she believes the city is moving forward on demolition without a firm follow-up plan.

"To me they really don't know what they want to use it for and, to me, that's very dangerous," Tugwell said. "I hope they're not making decisions economically based on not having money to refurbish it, only to then turn around and spend millions and millions of dollars on consultations."

Tugwell said the brutalist-style architecture the PSB represents doesn't garner the same reaction that some of the other buildings in the Exchange District do. She said the current state of the PSB and the neighbouring parkade, combined with how the building has been used over the years, won't elicit the same type of nostalgia from Winnipeggers.

Still, she argued, other heritage buildings have been retrofitted over the years to find uses for them that were different from the original intentions, and the same could one day be said for the PSB.

"Environmentally speaking, the greenest building you can have is the building that's already built," she said. "(Environmental groups) should be appalled in the 21st century we're still ripping down good structures. You could justify it in the '60s and '70s out of ignorance, but I just don't understand in the 21st century how we're still doing this."

John Orlikow, chair of the property and development, heritage and downtown development committee, said that the city has to prioritize.

“We have some actual historic buildings that are quite significant that need a lot of investment,” he told the committee.

The vote to demolish the PSB and parkade still has to pass through executive policy committee and a vote of full city council.