New Church Contruction - Update

On 30 May 2016, the property on 525-531 Frankston-Dandenong Road, Dandenong South was purchased with the intention to build a church and other required amenities for the functioning of the Melbourne South East Parish

This property is ideally located for the Syro-Malabar Community, where nearly 80% of the families can commute within 20 Minutes and about 95% of the families in around 30 Minutes to the facility.

The Greater Dandenong Council has granted us permit to use this premises as a Place of Worship, once their conditions are met. Various works have already been completed towords meeting the council conditions.

With the collective efforts of all the committee members and by the grace of God, we were able to achieve significant progress in the Church building project during the past one year even during this unprecedented times of Covid 19.

Church Building – Plans, Approvals and Permits

After seeking approval in Pothuyogam in October 2020, the Committee engaged an architect to

prepare the final plans and town planning drawings for submission to the council. We submitted our application to construct a new building in place of the existing one to Dandenong City Council. We submitted all required documents in March 2021 and received the amended permit in the last week of May 2021, granting us permission to construct the new Church building. We submitted the plans for stamping in June 2021 incorporating requirements from the council. The council responded to the submitted drawings on 30 th September with some amendments. The new amendments required are relatively minor ones and we submitted the amended drawings on 8 th October. Now we are expecting the endorsed plan any time soon.

In order to shorten the lead time, the committee decided to engage all other consultants to

complete the working drawings while waiting for the stamped plans from the Council. The

Consultants are carrying out their preliminary design and documentation at this stage.

Construction of Service Road

One of the major conditions set for building permit is Construction of the service road and slip lane to the main entrance to the property. It was completed in January 2021 with partial cost shared by the neighbour developer. We received the letter of practical completion from both Vic roads and Dandenong council. Road is under a maintenance period of 1 year with Vic roads. The three-month maintenance period with the council has been completed and we received the letter of final completion from the Council. We received the agreed sum of $130,000 from the neighbour developer of service station to our account.

Works under the Federal Government Grant

We received a safer communities grant of $442,915 to spend on enhancing security requirements of the property. We spent the allocated amount for FY 2020-21 for the construction of the steel fencing around the property and for public lighting in the service road. The fencing of the West boundary, the fencing between the sports oval and the old sports building and fencing along our boundary with the service station developer, were completed in June2021. So far, we have completed 364 metres of fencing.

Updates May 2022

We sent out the tender documents to 8 builders on 5 May 2022. The due date for the prospective builders to return the tenders is 9 June 2022. We engaged the contractor to demolish the old function centre (front building). We are finalising the quotes for car park lights, supply pillar and the main switch board.

Let us all pray and work together towords realising the dream of  our parish church, to make it a place where GOD dwells among us, keeping the faith and confidence, “that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us" (1 John 5:14)