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Renovating the old Seaman’s Bethel building in Portland’s Old Town/Chinatown into a European-style hostel will start with the foundation and move all the way to the roof.

That process begins with removing a rubble foundation that has supported the long-vacant 12,000 square-foot, four-story building on Northwest Third Avenue and replacing it with a modern seismic, support system without losing the building’s historic nature.

A development group called KeyMar LLC is remaking the currently unreinforced building into the Society Hotel, a 39-room hostel that will include a ground-floor café and rooftop terrace.

“Seismic is the challenge,” said Matt Siegel, a KeyMar partner and the principal of Building Blocks LLC, which is the design-build contractor on the project. “We are wrapping our heads around the massive seismic upgrades that have to be done to bring it up to a place where it will last another 100 years.”

Massive footings will be poured into two corners of the building and a third seismic support – a concrete and steel elevator shaft – will run up through the center of the building.

Hundreds of metal straps will be tied into the building’s brick walls and ceilings, creating a system that will absorb the shock of a major earthquake, Siegel said.

As the seismic work proceeds, no alterations will be made visible from the exterior of the building except a fresh coat of paint, Siegel said. Instead of adding diagonal cross braces on windows, Building Blocks basically will build a building inside of a building, with eight-inch-thick concrete shear walls bracing the building from its footings all the way to the roof.

“We elected not to use the cross braces because it disrupts the historic look of the building,” Siegel said. “Instead, we will build new concrete walls inside of the old.”

Seismic work will represent about 20 percent of the total construction costs, said Jonathan Cohen, a partner in KeyMar. Cohen would not disclose total project costs because the design and some permits are still in process.

The project will involve significant energy upgrades that will allow the developers to apply for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold designation, said Cohen, who also is a principal of Imagine Energy LLC, a Portland-based energy consulting and design firm.

KeyMar is looking to place the building on the National Historic Register, which could garner a 20 percent tax credit against improvement costs upon completion of the project, Cohen said.

With an eye toward earning a spot on the register, the project team worked with Heritage Consulting Group, a national firm with offices in Portland, to determine the historic use of the building and how the building would be preserved.

For example, KeyMar will preserve and maintain several aspects of the building, particularly those in the most public parts of the building, Cohen said. An aged handrail along the stairwell that currently does not meet code requirements will be kept in place and wrapped with a higher guard rail that meets code, Cohen said. Additionally, about three tons of Douglas fir wood stripped from the ceilings throughout the building will be remilled and reinstalled on the ground floor.

The National Park Service and the State Office of Historic Preservation approved the team’s submitted preservation plan, which will be monitored throughout the project. Placement on the registry would be made upon completion of the project, Cohen said.

Energy efficient systems will be installed throughout the building without causing significant changes to the building’s historic nature, including energy-efficient features, rooftop photovoltaic panels and a heat recovery ventilation system that recirculates air throughout the building, according to Cohen.

Laser-cut window inserts will be placed inside the building’s single-paned windows, sealing out air loss, Cohen said. The inserts will keep the windows intact for historic preservation, he said.

That process of creating energy efficiency without altering the historic aspects of the building is critical for the success of historic preservation, said Peggy Moretti, executive director of Restore Oregon, who has toured the future Society Hotel building and called the project “a good catalyst” for other projects that could follow in the Old Town area.

The building’s natural ventilation features and windows lend themselves to technology upgrades, Moretti said.

“There are lots of ways these ways buildings can be made very energy efficient,” she said. “There’s a lot of old technology, but you can build in energy efficiency without losing the historic nature of the building.”

Project: The Society Hotel

Address: 203-209 N.W. Third Ave., Portland

Construction start: November 2013

Completion: May 2015

Project owner: KeyMar LLC

Architect: Integrate Architecture

Engineer: DCI Engineers

General contractor: Building Blocks LLC