Starting about 6 a.m., movers will haul the residence built by former Mayor John P. Kiggins from its 101-year perch on East Evergreen Boulevard to a waiting lot in the Arnada neighborhood at 24th and H streets.

Eager to receive the building, listed on the National Historic Register in 1995, are Bruce and Judith Wood, who plan to make it their home.

The move will cost $85,000 but excavation and remodeling will cost nearly triple that, Bruce Wood said. The couple previously refurbished a house in Shumway and their current home, which is next door to the new site.

A crew began Monday to unearth the old home’s foundation. By Friday the house should be settled on several large dollies, ready to roll.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Keith Settle, head of Scappoose, Ore.-based Northwest Structural Moving, which was hired for the job.

“I’ll know for sure, later in the week. But it looks promising,” Settle said.

Easing the two-and-a-half story home about 18 city blocks — west, then jogging north and east — should take four to six hours, he said.

There could be brief, localized power outages as utility crews lift or lower overhead lines from harm’s way, Settle said.

Motorists on the busy 15th Street-Mill Plain Boulevard couplet could run into several minutes’ delay while the home slides by.

The house’s removal signals tangible start of work on the $160 million Riverwest project, destined to cover four city blocks at the southeast corner of Evergreen and C Street.

A new, 90,000-square foot Vancouver Community Library will rise over a public underground parking garage, close to Evergreen Boulevard. The centerpiece library could be finished by 2011.

Riverwest also will include 200 condominiums, 100,000 square feet of office space, a 65-room hotel, a restaurant and an outdoor area with a fireplace.

It will be late autumn or early 2009 before significant excavation work begins.

By fall, developer Killian Pacific expects four vacated homes that front Evergreen to be razed, said Steve Burdick, the firm’s director of development. Buildings used by the Carr Auto Group, which moved to northeast Vancouver in April, also will be demolished.

An exception is the white-brick, one-story studio designed and used by noted Vancouver architect Day W. Hilborn. Negotiations continue to move it to a site at Markle Avenue and West Mill Plain Boulevard.

The studio would hold offices of the Southwest Washington Community Land Trust, a nonprofit organization that helps provide housing to low- to moderate-income families.

Settle, 37, who launched his moving business 17 years ago, said relocating the brick home would present no unusual challenge.

“It just takes a little more steel, a little more care,” Settle said. “We’ve actually moved unreinforced brick, three-or four-story office buildings. What we tell our customers is: ‘If it can be built, it can be moved,’ ” he said.

Precaution is necessary to navigate Vancouver’s downtown, however. “It’s trickier; the streets are narrow. There are more mature trees to deal with,” Settle said.

Built in 1907, the Kiggins House is a front-gabled structure with a detached two-car garage, which will be razed. A prominent real estate developer, Kiggins apparently lived in the home until his death in 1941, at age 72. The property remained under family ownership until it was sold in 1994. Most recently it was used as offices.

Settle said he’s unfazed by handling the historic home, which will stretch to 35 feet high while on the dollies. Last summer, his company moved the registered Ladd Carriage House in downtown Portland for safekeeping during a tower construction project.

“Actually, some of these older ones are easier to work with than newer buildings. They have better lumber, to start with,” he said. “The joists are all straight-grained. No knots. And full-dimension lumber.”

Full-dimension lumber?

A century ago, a 2x4 beam actually measured 2 inches by 4 inches, and so is stronger, still, than today’s slimmed-down version, he said.

Howard Buck can be reached at 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com.