The planned multimillion-dollar centre will include a 3900sq m main church building, including an auditorium, chapel, classrooms, offices, kitchen, multipurpose gym and child-care facility.
Nearly 300 car parks are also planned at the site, which is bounded by the southern motorway to the north and Main South Rd to the east and south.
Earthworks had begun on the site in November and were expected to be completed, depending on weather, by late next month, Mike Simpson, an administrative pastor at the Dunedin City Baptist church, said yesterday.
Earthmoving work for the whole site was being undertaken, including cutting a platform for the main church building, and, later, providing for car-parking spaces.
The 500-plus congregation had long outgrown its former church building in Hanover St, Dunedin, which had been sold in 1996, Mr Simpson said.
Church members had since lacked a permanent site to worship and had recently been holding Sunday services at Otago Boys' High School.
The new facility was being developed in several phases, and more fundraising would be required after the earthworks were completed.
A Dunedin City Council hearings committee gave initial resource consent for the church development in June 2009.
Building plans and detailed engineering drawings were already being developed and would also be submitted to the council for building consent later this year.
Shared community use of the new facility was planned.
It had never been intended for the congregation to be without a permanent home for 14 years, but it had proved difficult to acquire land in Dunedin North, where it had initially been hoped to develop a facility, he said.
