DANVILLE, CA-The historic but mostly vacated Danville Hotel is about to undergo a transformation and redevelopment.

Demolition of the dilapidated portions of the building complex will begin after January 8, according to a report in the Contra Costa Times. That will allow for work to begin in early February on an 18-month, $25 million construction project to create a 35,000-square-foot retail, residential and commercial development in the center of the town, which is one of California's wealthiest.

The project will include 16 second-floor condominiums, three restaurants, an outdoor plaza and stores.

The historic Danville Hotel at 411 Hartz Avenue and the adjacent white, one-and-a-half story McCauley House, both more than 100 years old, will be preserved as historically significant town sites. Buildings added to the site in the 1950s and '60s will be taken down. Two new buildings will replace them, and the facades of the two-story development portion will be made to appear as separate buildings constructed over time.

Throughout its more than 150-year history, the Danville Hotel has been a boardinghouse, a fine-dining destination, a shopping plaza and a Wild West attraction.

Once demolition starts, it will last 10 days or more—longer than a typical knockdown job—so that the demoltion company can carefully separate the historic parts from the non-historic, the paper reports.

Town Manager Joe Calabrigo said the redevelopment plan unfolded over a decade. "All told, 10 years, as the project's design plan has gone through several iterations before it was approved in 2011," he told the Times.

Operated by Henry W. Harris, who became the town's first postmaster, the original Danville Hotel was built in 1858 at what is now Front Street and Diablo Road.

Click Contra-Costa Times to read the full story.