Lehi Mayor Howard Johnson would like to tear down historic buildings on Main Street to build a new City Hall and expand the famously congested road, but not everyone in the city agrees with him.

Of the many buildings in the city's historic commercial district, only four are worth saving, Johnson said -- the Lehi Historic Hotel, the Colonial House, Corena's and the restored building on the northeast corner of 100 West and Main Street.

The city has recently purchased three other historic Main Street buildings -- Porter's Place for $250,000, the Cash-It-Now Pawn Shop for $229,000 and the adjacent empty corner building at 6 W. Main St. for $129,000.

"I'd like to see Main Street widened or a north street and a south street made one way to help carry the traffic through town," Johnson said. "And if we widen Main Street, my expectations would be it would widen the north because more keepable buildings are on the south."

Advocates of historic buildings decry the plan, and city staff and even council members say they disagree too.

"We are rich in history and we ought to be able to keep some of it," said Connie Nielson, chair of the city's historic commission. Each of the three buildings purchased by the city "was build in a different period of time and has a different personality."

City administrator Jamie Davidson said Lehi's original intent in purchasing the three buildings was to begin a revitalization of the historic district. The city has become a revitalization developer, he said.

"Our intent is to market those properties," Davidson said. "We feel like the city can act as a catalyst for the revitalization of downtown. We don't as a city want to become a long-term tenant of Main Street."

Councilman Johnny Revill said the buildings should not be torn down unless engineers find them unsound and irreparable -- and even then they should be replaced by the city with a building reflective of the historic commerce district.

"Our intent is to purchase these properties and make them into usable facilities, whether it's office or something that is marketable," Revill said. "So they can see 'hey, this is something that has value.' We're trying to just start this process. The intent is to buy the buildings but not tear them down."

If the city doesn't jump-start the revitalization effort, it may never happen, he said.

"It's not going to be a parking lot," he said of the district.

A retired engineer, the mayor said widening Main Street would help solve not only Lehi's traffic problem, but would also encourage revitalization in the downtown historic district.

By building a new city hall in the downtown area, the city would be supporting the economic development of Main Street, he said.

"City Hall was built when the population was 8,000," Johnson said. "Now it's 45,000 and we're still trying to work out of the same building. We need more space and the mayor would like to see the city look at a nice new city hall in four to eight years that would be a focal point of this restoration and maybe pioneer architecture representing the city's heritage, somewhere around that motif."

He said he foresees doing something similar to what the state did on Orem's 800 North, purchasing property as it comes available.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D4.