A final decision on when work will start on a $3 million twin commercial and apartment development on the Esplanade at St Clair Beach in Dunedin is likely within a couple of months.
The separate Hotel St Clair, at the southern end of the Esplanade, remains for sale, having been on the market for a year now.
A third Esplanade proposal, for selling $7 million of apartments off the plan, has ''gone back to the drawing board''.
Construction of the twin development has been a long time in coming.
It will be on the section cleared 15 years ago where a dairy once stood on the northern end of the Esplanade, on Forbury Rd, which at present has three separate hospitality outlets.
Restaurant chain operator Murray Macarthy has had several false starts to the project but he remains adamant it will start this year, with latest construction cost estimates around $3 million.
Mr Macarthy was contacted yesterday and said the project manager was due to meet the builder today to go over the building plans and pricing.
''If everything stacks up, they should be finalising a start date July [or] August,'' Mr Macarthy said.
While the back boundaries of the two sites overlap, the design use of the two, three-storey buildings has been changed over time.
The Bedford St ground floor is still being prepared for a bakery, but both levels one and two will be for office space.
In Forbury Rd, there will now be just one ground floor restaurant space, and levels one and two will have two apartments each.
The original business model was to sell the four apartments and lease out the four separate commercial spaces.
The five-and-a-half-year-old award-winning Hotel St Clair, owned by southern construction and property family Calder Stewart, has been on the market since May last year.
Calder Stewart had taken over and completed construction and fit-out of the 26-room, restaurant and conference room facility - and been the operator.
But a year ago it decided to sell as the hotel was not part of its core business interests.
A spokeswoman for the separate proposed $7 million of beachside apartments said yesterday ''no progress had been made, and it's back to the drawing board''.
