A design for a new combined North Otago Museum, Forrester Gallery and Waitaki District Archive on the gallery site is closer to being ready for public viewing.
A stakeholder meeting was held this week to discuss the Waitaki District Council's proposal to redevelop the cultural facilities.
About 20 people attended the meeting, where the council presented its vision, Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher saying the response to the latest proposed design and plans had been positive.
The long-term proposal now includes moving the North Otago Museum, as well as the archive, to the Forrester Gallery site, to provide a ''one-stop facility for storing our council-owned heritage collections''.
''There'll be a lot of fine-tuning, but the general design, I think, we're on the right track,'' Mr Kircher said.
The project was approved in 2012 as part of the long-term plan but got held up, partly because of decisions being made nationally on earthquake-prone buildings.
''It's taken us a while to get to where we are, to get to the stage were we can nail down how we can do it within a reasonable budget and do all the things we want,'' Mr Kircher said.
The building housing the museum requires earthquake strengthening and climate-control work and the council saw the redevelopment as an ''ideal opportunity'', Mr Kircher said.
''It's all about looking after our heritage collections and art and archives and it'll be really good to have a project which has them all in one place,'' he said.
Initial proposals put the redevelopment costs at between $7 million and $10 million, but an amended building design has the latest cost estimates upwards of $4.5 million.
The council would contribute a third of the total cost, with the remaining two thirds sought from funding, including from the Lottery Grants Board.
''We are getting closer to being able to show the wider public the amended building design and budget, and I'm a lot happier with it than the $7 million to $10 million dollar budget that the project had reached before the new council got involved,'' Mr Kircher said.
''The proposal that we've come up with now ticks a lot of the boxes, as far as it gets the museum, gallery and archives all in the one building and that creates efficiency.''
The three-storey design, with an extension at the back of the building, would hopefully lead to better services for the public and it could result in cost savings in the long term, Mr Kircher said.
If the project is approved, one of the key improvements will be the installation of a lift providing access to the whole gallery.
A cultural facilities redevelopment committee has been established with deputy mayor Hugh Perkins as its chairman.
As part of the 2012 long-term plan, the project is open to public comment, and it will again be under public scrutiny when the 2015-25 long-term plan goes out for consultation later this year.
