General practitioners at Alexandra's medical centres joined forces to buy the former PGG Wrightson premises in Tarbert St, with the intent of providing a more streamlined medical service for the community.
Group spokeswoman Christine Williamson, of Cornerstone Health, said doctors who owned the building had finalised preliminary designs and hoped to select a building contractor in the next week.
"We are very pleased to be able to say we have positive direction for this," she said.
The building would house three existing practices and a pharmacy, and incorporate facilities, including an ambulance bay, for after-hours and on-call staff.
Space would also be provided for trainee doctors from the Dunedin School of Medicine as well as visiting specialists, Dr Williamson said.
"It will be extensively modified to accommodate all of the GPs and their support staff. In the future, other primary health services may also be available from the site," she said.
Dr Williamson said she hoped construction would start this year.
All medical staff involved in the project were excited about the prospect of working alongside one another.
Equipment and resources would be able to be shared easily among practices, which would remain separate entities to comply with competitive business laws, she said.
"This purpose-built centre will be to the benefit of both patients and practitioners. It is the way forward for family medicine - providing services from the same centre.
"It will certainly make it simple and straight forward for the community in terms of accessing health care," Dr Williamson said.
The idea was first mooted more than 10 years ago when doctors, nurses and other medical staff started to outgrow their practices, and visiting specialists began having trouble fitting into offices already bursting at the seams.
Such a facility was also seen as being more attractive to potential medical recruits, which Alexandra desperately needed as a rural town with ageing doctors and a growing population.
