HAVERHILL — What was once the old, crumbling St. Gregory the Illuminator church is now a leveled piece of ground across from City Hall. 

But not for long.

Area restaurateur David Jenks, who purchased the site from the Armenian Archdiocese of New York, said Monday that he hopes to see construction begin next week on a new, 7,000-square foot development which will house a long-awaited Domino's Pizza franchise.

Jenks is the president and CEO of Master Pie, Inc., a Danvers-based company which owns 21 Domino's franchises in eastern Massachusetts, including one at 389 Main St., a half a mile north of the one being constructed on the former site of St. Gregory the Illuminator.

In addition to Domino's, Jenks said there will be three or four additional retail tenants in the development.

The church was demolished in late June after standing at the corner of Main and Summer streets since the 1840s. The building which housed St. Gregory the Illuminator previously had been home to Unitarian and Episcopalian churches prior to being consecrated by the Armenian Archdiocese in 1945. 

But for 15 years, the church tried to sell the building to help it offset costs of constructing a new church, the Armenian Apostolic Church at Hye Pointe, and Family Life and Cultural Center, located at 1280 Boston Road in Bradford, near the North Andover border.

The $2.7 million Family Life and Cultural Center opened in April and construction on the new church itself — which officials estimate will cost between $1.5 million and $1.9 million — could begin within a year.

"We're working on the plans for the new church and if everything goes according to those plans, (construction) could begin as early as October," said the Rev. Vart Gyozalyan, the church's pastor since 2011. 

According to a quitclaim deed filed with the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds, the property containing St. Gregory the Illuminator at 130 Main St. was sold to Haverdom, LLC., of 100 Conifer Hill Drive, Danvers, on May 24, 2017 for $750,000.

While the former St. Gregory the Illuminator was located at 110 Main St., the city's property website still lists the former church's address as 130 Main St., the Armenian Archdiocese of New York as its owner, and its assessed value at $679,700.

The process of selling the church was a long, arduous affair for parishioners at St. Gregory's, who had seen a prospective deal fall through several years ago to sell the property to a developer looking to put a Burger King franchise in its place.

Many in the community were upset with the idea of locating a pizza place on the site of the church, and there was even a movement to stop the sale and demolition of the church by requiring more extensive evaluations of historic properties inside the city's Main Street Historic District prior to the granting of any demolition permit.

However, a June 2016 vote by the City Council stymied the effort and allowed the sale and demolition to proceed.

This allowed the region's Armenian community — St. Gregory the Illuminator merged with the Holy Cross Armenian Apostolic Church in Lawrence in 2002 — to move on to its new church in Bradford, which also welcomes parishioners from as far west as Tewksbury and as far north as Portland, Maine.

Gyozalyan said several hundred families attend the church. And while it has been hard to look at the hole on Main Street where St. Gregory the Illuminator once stood, he and his flock are focused on growing and building their new church and their parish community.

"We tried our best to save our items from the old church — our pews, our baptismal font, and our icons," said Gyozalyan, adding that those items are in storage and will all be placed in the new church. "It's been difficult for us (to see the old church gone). But we needed to move forward."