More than half a million dollars worth of major restoration work on Dunedin's historic prison is due to begin soon.
The Otago Prison Trust yesterday announced an expected September 1 date for work on the 120-year-old building.
The public will see scaffolding rise on the Castle St facade after a year-long funding drive got close enough to a $550,000 target for work to start.
The work is the first stage of the trust's development programme to return the building to its original appearance.
One of the oldest prisons in New Zealand, the Victorian-style courtyard facility was decommissioned in 2007.
The trust was formed in 2011 to save the building, and bought the Heritage New Zealand Category 1 site from Ngai Tahu in 2012.
The trust last year lodged a planning application with the Dunedin City Council, detailing about $250,000 of restorative work which would return the prison's exterior to its original 1896 condition.
The application included work on the building's roof and walls, as well as seismic strengthening, work expected to cost another $250,000.
Trustee Hamish Saxton said yesterday getting a weather-tight building was the trust's focus.
"That's first and foremost.''
Some of the earlier concepts suggested for the site, which included a restaurant, museum and shop, as well as suggestions of a commercial tenant running a hostel, "remain in mind as part of an overall vision'' for the building.
No decisions on those matters had been made, however, and the priority was the restoration stage of the work.
"This is part of the first stage. There will be numerous stages to the restoration. This one is an important one.''
Trust chairman Owen Graham said the work was scheduled as 14-week project, which should be finished by Christmas, if the weather was good and there were "no surprises''.
The trust had not made firm decisions on what work would come next.
"We're trying to focus on this first because once we've got this phase, which is the roof and the structure itself good and tidy, that lets us make better decisions about what the next phase of work is.''
The trust's prison tours would stop during the restoration work, but would begin again in the new year.
