The Heritage Museum and Cultural Center will no longer be running St. Joseph Lighthouse tours for the city.

The Heritage announced it’s selling its building at 601 Main Street to the Curious Kids Museum last week and reimagining itself. Heritage Board Treasurer Sven Erickson tells us as part of the coming changes, the museum is stepping away from its role organizing the lighthouse tours. It informed the city of St. Joseph last week. Erickson says the city already has identified a couple of potential options to take over the tours. It will let the public know who to contact about them once it has settled on a new arrangement.

Meanwhile, as the Heritage prepares to leave its home, Erickson says it’s hired a doctoral student from Notre Dame to sort through its massive archives and to catalogue everything. Items not deemed significant will be returned to those who donated them or given to other organizations while the Heritage maintains archives of essential materials and stores them securely.

The 1,600 square feet of documents, furniture, and clothing in the archive are being moved to the new Heritage temporary location at Ship Street and Main Street. Erickson says some people who have made donations to the Heritage have expressed concern, but they can be assured all historically significant archives will be safely preserved.

Erickson notes the museum will receive money from the building sale and has a substantial endowment, putting it in a good position for change. He tells us the changes coming to the Heritage Museum will be a good thing, making the more than 60-year-old institution more effective.

We can expect to hear more in the coming months once the Heritage Museum Board has more discussions and things have settled down from the building sale. Erickson says the museum will soon relocate one of its exhibits from its current building to the location on Ship Street.