Although construction is an estimated five to seven years away the City of Humboldt is getting the ball rolling on a design for an addition onto the Uniplex.

On Monday night at council's bi-monthly meeting, P3Architecture Partnership Architect James Youck updated them on the progress of the preliminary plans.

He said the initial stages consists of meetings and hearing what stakeholders are envisioning.

"How they would use the facility and what they would like to see," he explained Tuesday. "We then correlated that into what we refer to as a program to give ourselves a sense of the scale of the project and then we put together a parameters document that outlines those programmatic elements and also the vision of the project overall."

A multi-purpose sport and trade show type building is expected to be one portion of the new section of the Uniplex. That would be able to host soccer, baseball training and other fitness amenities(walking track) but also be able to have a trade show safe floor.

The design is also to include a 300-350 seat theatre to replace the now demolished Sutherland Theatre.

Youck says that aspect of the project is high on the list.

"We've heard very clearly and very consistently that the need for a theatre with a full stage, proper back of house, proper lighting and that sort of thing is very important to the cultural offerings in the community."

More meetings are scheduled in the future and the public will continue to be involved as the "Our Humboldt" initiative was a key component of Youck's preliminary report. They are going to go through a process of actually visiting the site with invested parties.

"To show us how they think the building would work the best and where they think things should be connected and how the overall complex might work," Youck explained. "It's a great way for us to generate a lot ideas and and collect a lot of the great concepts that people in the community have about a building very, very quickly."

No dollar figure has been publicly discussed by council but during the meeting Youck did mention the $14 million range for the top end design he would present. He did say in his experience that is within Humboldt's reach.

"Absolutely, I think there is a wide number of funding opportunities that need to be looked at and pursued from the provincial government, the federal government, from corporate partnerships. We've seen other communities of comparable size that were more expensive than this."

You can hear more from Youck below in his interview with Bolt FM's Clark Stork below.