Joe Hu/Town Crier An architect’s conception of the 250,000-square-foot Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s main building.

Now that the old Emporium department store at El Camino near Highway 85 has been demolished and ground has been broken, the construction crew at the future site of Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s main campus is preparing to pour the foundation.

The medical foundation launched construction of the 250,000-square-foot, three-story facility March 29 with a formal groundbreaking ceremony on the 9.66-acre property vacant for approximately nine years. The $153 million project’s expected completion date is spring 2007.

The medical foundation’s division Camino Medical Group will consolidate nine of its 15 sites throughout Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Los Altos at an out-patient medical center in the new campus.

David Regester, an architect with Hawley, Peterson and Snyder who worked on plans for the building, described the facility as “welcoming” with a “handsome community presence.” The “gateway building” was designed to protect the Dale Family Grove, a group of heritage trees planted at the turn of the century when the property was a working farm. Designs show a triangular notch cut in the building to accommodate the grove.

When the Mountain View City Council discussed the project last year, residents requested a “landmark” building to alert drivers when they cross the Sunnyvale-Mountain View border.

The facility will house 100 physicians and 310 nurses in addition to staff and technicians. It is estimated that 1,650 patients will visit the facility each day. The site will contain 1,100 parking spaces, in a two-level parking structure located in front of the building.

“The old Emporium site was chosen because it is very convenient for the overwhelming majority of our patients and because it is a large enough site to have all of our physicians and staff together in one location,” said Dr. Richard Slavin, CEO of Camino Medical Group.

The Mountain View City Council gave the go-ahead Nov. 23 to the foundation, approving its plans. In 1995, Home Depot acquired the property and proposed building a 100,000-square-foot store. Neighborhood residents voiced opposition to the proposed big-box store and the truck traffic it would create. In March 2002, the council voted by a two-to-one margin to overturn the home-improvement retail giant’s plans.