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This article was published 16/2/2012 (3147 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SUBMITTED PHOTO / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES A drawing of one of the indoor multi-purpose soccer pitches in the field house.

The wishing, the dreaming, the hoping -- that time is past; now it's time to start building.

As early as fall 2013, Winnipeg's inner city will have a $40-million field house on the University of Winnipeg campus. It will have an indoor soccer complex, a track, a dance and yoga studio, community health services and a major expansion of health and wellness facilities.

The U of W's board of regents still has to OK the project at its March 26 meeting, but when is the last time the board has turned down one of U of W president Lloyd Axworthy's megaprojects, and one on which Axworthy and Premier Greg Selinger have already gone public?

"It's a much more holistic approach than saying it's another sports arena," Axworthy explained Tuesday.

"We want something that will be a preventative health centre. We're trying to combine it as an athletic-wellness-fitness centre for the downtown and the inner city.

"It's being able to open a door for boys and girls seven and eight (years old)."

The U of W should break ground on the complex in June, Axworthy said. It would be built between Spence and Young streets, running north from the edge of the CBC property to the Duckworth Centre, to which it would connect at the second-storey level.

The field house will have three indoor soccer pitches and can open up to a full-size soccer field, suitable for other activities such as field lacrosse and flag football. "It'll be unique in terms of its range of services," Axworthy said.

SUBMITTED PHOTO / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES An artist�s rendering of the proposed U of W field house, which will have sports, fitness and wellness components.

The university will operate the complex to break even, he emphasized, not to generate revenue. It will be available to organized sports, but only one-third of the time; one-third of the time goes to university use, including varsity, intramural and academic research, and the other third to community use.

Already, 18 community organizations in the inner city have formed a group and are eager to get kids off the streets, expanding the U of W's already thriving campus access for children, especially aboriginal kids and newcomers to Canada.

"We're part of this neighbourhood. It should affect and influence what we do," Axworthy said.

At one point, the ground floor was to be part of a parkade, with the field above it, but the parkade will be moved somewhere nearby to one of four possible locations, which Axworthy wouldn't identify for fear of encouraging property speculators.

He acknowledged, however, that the U of W hopes to continue moving toward connecting the main campus to the science building two blocks west on Portage Avenue.

The complex -- naming rights are available to both the field house and wellness centre to anyone with deep pockets -- and Duckworth Centre will be home to an athletic therapy clinic, which could include a walk-in clinic, pharmacy, an X-ray lab as well as chiropractic and nutrition and obesity treatment areas.

U of W students will conduct research on diabetes and other health and lifestyle issues while working with community members using the complex. As a condition of being a varsity athlete, Axworthy pointed out, "part of the education of the players is working with younger children. There's a very big need for skills development."

David Fitzpatrick, dean of the new faculty of kinesiology, said the university hopes to establish a concussion resource centre within the complex.

"Lloyd's vision is very much similar to mine," said Fitzpatrick, who values varsity sports and elite-level competition, but wants everyone to be able to take part in activities and improve their skills.

"I'm more interested in broad-based, bottom-up skills development," he said.

When the community comes on campus, university students will be there to work with them and learn from them, said Fitzpatrick: "All our courses have practica linked to them."

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

More soccer pitches

THE Selinger government promised during the election campaign to build two additional indoor soccer complexes to join the existing facility at the University of Manitoba.

One of those new complexes will be at the University of Winnipeg.

The third will be somewhere in north Winnipeg, with Red River College's Notre Dame campus considered one of the prime contenders.

Selinger also promised to build nine more outdoor fields with lights and artificial turf. There are four already -- two at the U of M and two at the Waverley Soccer Complex.

One of the nine will be built at Waverley, and there will be four more two-field sets built around the city by 2018.