If you looked at the front of Thursday’s copy of the LaGrange Daily News, it was probably hard for locals not to have a blast to the past.

The Royal Theater in Hogansville was featured at the top of the page as the city council tries to figure out what the future of the theater is. Carter Watkins Associates of Monroe has been approved to create a master plan to decide between one of three options for the theater — using it only as city hall, using it only as a performing arts center/theater or using it as some combination between the two.

The other older image was a photo of Anthony Rodriguez and Rob Goldstein, the co-founders of Wild Leap Brew Co., in front of the old Westbrook Tire building, which had been unused for years.

On Friday, a ribbon cutting will be held in front of that same building and on Saturday, it’ll host the launch party for the city’s newest brewery.

If you haven’t been able to find the connection between the two, it’s simply this — repurposing old buildings preserves history. It would’ve been easy for Wild Leap to tear down the Westbrook Tire building and as the co-founders have told us, it would’ve been cheaper too.

However, preserving the history was important.

That’s why Hogansville continues to debate what it should do with the theater.

As Mayor Bill Stankiewicz said, it’s important to preserve history because once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Whether that future includes it being a full performing arts center or theater again is up in the air, but either way the history will remain. That’s the important part.