Christchurch Christian School's co-ordinator and Establishment Board of Trustees chairman, Andy van Ameyde said the $150,000 to $200,000 building project, which includes a new worship centre for Queenstown's growing Salvation Army church, would be completed next month.
The board was also working on plans to expand on to an even bigger site in two or three years, planning a 300-pupil integrated Christian school at Remarkables Park, Frankton, which would include secondary students.
The new school on the existing Yewlett Cres site, to be named Kingsview School, would open at the start of term one next year.
It had been made possible after generous financial assistance from Real Journeys (formerly Fiordland Travel) co-founder Olive Hutchins, who founded the company with her tourism entrepreneur husband the late Les Hutchins, and an Auckland investor.
The Auckland businessman bought the former Remarkables Resort pub where the school has been operating from makeshift classrooms for the past four years, and were both very sympathetic to the cause.
The ministry approved the state integration, to allow more capacity to meet growth, Mr van Ameyde said. The government funding boost would now fund the teaching and learning, allowing the school board to double the size of the 440m2 school, providing four new classrooms all fitted out with computers and data projectors.
An establishment board of trustees had been appointed by the ministry, two locals and three from out of town, whose names were yet to be announced.
A new principal, Rebekah Key, of Christchurch's Middleton Grange School, starts work next month, and a second teacher was yet to be appointed.
Queenstown architectural designer Mark Hillary had "turned a derelict hotel into a modern learning environment".
The school, which had 20 pupils at the end of this year, began with 50 in the mid-1990s beneath the St Andrews Presbyterian Church in Queenstown, but Mr van Ameyde said when the school had to vacate that site in 2006. Several pupils were withdrawn because of the uncertainty.
They now had "substantial expressions of interest" to attend and the school board hoped to grow numbers to 100 during the next three years.
Attendance fees at Kingsview would be $900 a year, plus a voluntary donation, but Mr van Ameyde hoped they could be reduced as the school became established.