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Foundation work on the three-story, 13,000-square foot KAOS building started with a sizable concrete pour this week in downtown McMinnville. Developer Bob Emrick is aiming to create a contemporary building that fits in the city’s historic district.

Emrick, who spent a career in the recycling business, is using salvaged Douglas fir wood from the previous building on site as well as an old, local dairy barn for exterior siding and interior finish work. Some of the wood will be re-milled for benches and chairs in the KAOS building’s two restaurants.

The building, named after a 1960s radio station that operated in the area, will hold a fine-dining restaurant, a rooftop restaurant and office space, Emrick said.

“It will look very McMinnville,” he said. “It will feel like it’s been here for a while.”

Original plans called for a 21,000-square-foot building including an 11-suite hotel. Now, a separate 30-room hotel is planned for the back of the property closer to Fourth Street, Emrick said.

“We decided putting a hotel between two restaurants was not a good idea,” he said.

The hotel, not yet designed, will be built during a second phase.

Design elements will include a strong cornice line, stucco exterior and thick walls with arched openings, said Nathan Cooprider, the project’s architect. The rooftop restaurant will be wrapped with the old barn wood and be set back “almost like a penthouse” from the street, he said.

Cooprider and KPFF Consulting Engineers came up with a design that will use wooden dowels to hide metal connectors on most parts of the building, essentially showing off the wood.

There won’t be any steel or metal showing on the building, said Dennis Gaffney, vice president of construction for Joe Hughes Construction, the project’s general contractor.

Hiding the steel and metal will be a throwback to the old way of doing things, he said.

“In a normal building, most everything would be exposed,” Gaffney said. “In this building, with all the exposed wood, they want you to experience the wood, not the connectors.”