"It's very exciting to get here, and it's a great result for Alexandra," house trust chairwoman Bernie Lepper said yesterday.
The "final piece of the puzzle" was a $600,000 grant from the Central Lakes Trust, approved last week.
The new building, in St Enoch's Church grounds in the centre of Alexandra, will provide a common facility for social service agencies and education, arts and craft groups. Four buildings on the site, including the church hall, will be removed or demolished to make way for the complex. The trust recently applied to the Central Otago District Council for demolition consents. The historic trees on the site will remain.
Demolition would hopefully begin by the end of this month and most of the current tenants in Church House on the site, would relocate to the former Central Health building in Ventry St, Mrs Lepper said.
Breen Construction is the contractor and the building should be completed by November next year.
Central Lakes Trust chief executive Paul Allison said the trust believed a centralised facility to enable all the social service agencies to share office space, resources and ideas "will prove very beneficial and provide tangible benefits to our community."
Mrs Lepper is also a Central Lakes trustee, but declared an interest and took no part in the discussion on the grant for the complex. The trust also donated an earlier sum towards the project, $1 million, in April last year.
To mark the start of building, a whakawatae ceremony will be held on site, at 7.15am on Tuesday October 25. The function is to "farewell the old and make way for the new beginning," Mrs Lepper said.
The first meeting about the project in October 2007 was followed by a working party being set up and a feasibility study carried out. The trust was set up in early 2008 and its vision was for the house to be "a focal point to nurture and sustain the wellbeing of all people, though arts, education and social services."
Grants have been received from the Lotteries Communities Fund ($750,000), the Otago Community Trust ($200,000), the Alexander McMillan Trust ($30,000), Transpower ($40,000), Pub Charities ($37,000) and the Vincent Community Board ($8785 for legal costs and $12,079 for development contributions) as well as from the Central Lakes Trust. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust decided in December last year that an archaeological survey of Church House and the site was required. This was an unexpected expense for the community house trust and the Vincent board covered the $10,000 cost.
Donations from the present tenants, fundraising proceeds from a 2012 calendar and recipe book, and the Central Lakes grant had boosted the funds to hit the target, Mrs Lepper said.
