DAWSON CITY In the seemingly endless saga of recreation facilities for the City of Dawson, there may be a new wrinkle in the blueprints that very few people, including the town administration, were aware of.

There may be plans to replace the white elephant recreational centre on Fifth Avenue.

The new information came to light at Wednesday's meeting of the Dawson City Chamber of Commerce while gold miner and former MLA David Millar was discussing his vision for the World Goldpanning Championships. The event will be held here in August 2007.

One of the things Millar had learned while representing the Yukon at the recent World Goldpanning Championships in South Africa was that many participants were hoping there could be a campsite close to the panning venue.

That would be hard right now, with the venue up under the Moosehide Slide. But Millar feels it would be better to relocate it, for that year at least, to a more central location.

'I don't know if I should say this, but I'm going to anyway,' Millar told the group of business owners at their lunchtime meeting.

'I've been going around it is my wish to have it (the event) downtown. When I spoke to our MLA (the Yukon Party's Peter Jenkins) to give him a heads-up on this ... I've told some people about this, but I guess I'll just throw it out there now.

'My plan was to have ... it happen in Minto Park, and I'd like to see the camping happen in the highway compound there.'

Millar said he passed this on to Jenkins during their conversation.

'And I was told that the highway compound would not be available because there'd be a new arena there,' Millar told the meeting.

There was a pause, dead silence, and then a slow swell of nervous, somewhat puzzled laughter from the 26 people in the room.

'I just thought I'd throw that out there,' Millar said, raising his voice above the laughter.

'It's news to me,'said Dawson trustee Ray Hayes, who had spent a good chunk of Tuesday night talking about all the things that needed to be done with the current recreation centre and arena to make them serviceable for both the long- and short-term.

The highway compound is the former location of the local highways branch garages and equipment depot, which were moved south of town to Quigley Gulch in the mid-1990s when it looked like a second school might be needed in Dawson.

Later, when the education reserve was removed from the land, it became the preferred location for a mechanical secondary sewage treatment plant. That option has been discarded in favour of a lagoon system, so the land is once again open for other possibilities.

Jenkins' office was contacted for comment this morning, but there was no response.

Cabinet spokesman Peter Carr said this morning he too could not comment until he hears back from the office of the Dawson MLA and deputy premier.

The new Dawson recreational centre has turned out to be a multimillion-dollar mess for the community. It's been plagued with nothing but structural and design problems from the very outset of the project, and has been the subject of extensive legal matters and lawsuits.

Jon Magnusson of the Dawson City Bed and Breakfast said today he was at the meeting and heard Millar's words, just like everybody else did.

Magnusson said what concerns him are the plans to spend money making required improvements to the new recreational centre while there may be an unannounced scheme to build another new arena.

Paul Moore, Dawson's chief administrative officer, said today that as far as he knows, expenditures on the new building will be limited to routine operation and maintenance, though all money is under the control of the Yukon government.

The government removed Dawson's town council in April 2004, citing the need to straighten out what has been described as a debt-ridden financial quagmire for Dawson.

Chuck Tobin contributed to this story.