The centre, only the second in the country and the first in the South Island, will emply a full-time paid coach based at the University of Otago Rowing Club's harbourside aquatic centre for the next four years.
The partnership, announced yesterday, is worth an estimated $800,000 over four years and is being funded by Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sparc) through Rowing New Zealand's high performance initiative, and through local sponsorship.
The 80-year-old university rowing club has about 200 members, with 60-80 rowing competitively each year.
It opened its $1.5 million aquatic centre in 2003, four years after its old clubrooms burnt down.
Club chief executive Glen Sinclair said yesterday he was "ecstatic".
"I gave us 10 years to become the best rowing club in New Zealand, and we're almost there."
The club's eight volunteers were already coaching several promising young rowers and the addition of a full-time coach would attract more, he said.
The full-time coach would work with the volunteer coaches to monitor teams and individual rowers and oversee year-round training programmes.
"There will be some Olympic rowers come out of this, if not in 2012 then in 2016."
The coaching position would be advertised next week and it was hoped the coach would be in place by the start of the second university semester in July, he said.
Rowing New Zealand high performance manager Alan Cotter said yesterday the establishment of the centre could be the difference between promising young rowers choosing to study at Otago or another university.
"Glen has already got a good programme going and we wanted to support and advance that. We wouldn't be putting in a full-time coach if we didn't believe in what he was doing."
Rowing New Zealand's national high performance centre is at Lake Karapiro, near Cambridge.
There are also regional training centres in Auckland, Waikato, Blenheim and Christchurch.
Rowing New Zealand would not be "shoulder-tapping" promising young rowers and directing them to Dunedin, Mr Cotter said.
However, he said the sport had identified many young rowers, some of whom had already made national junior teams, who decided to take a year off after leaving secondary school to concentrate on their university studies.
"We hope some of them might decide to come to Dunedin because of the high performance centre."
