A new bar and grill is under construction near the Leslie Road roundabout at the west end of West Clearwater Avenue in Kennewick.

Silo’s Sports Bar and Grill’s doors are expected to open in mid- to late January in this rapidly expanding edge of town near Interstate 82 at 12125 W. Clearwater Ave.

Silo’s owner, VC Enterprises, promises to bring to the Tri-Cities a fresh, upscale take on the sports bar concept.

“What it is we want to do is a high-end bar compared to what we have in the Tri-Cities. We want to do something a little unique in the Tri-Cities,” said Phil DeLaRosa, VC Enterprises spokesman, who grew up in the Tri-Cities, moved away for about 11 years, and recently returned.

“It’ll be something in between a pub and Twigs,” he said, adding that Silo’s will be a departure from the typical sports bar atmosphere. “A place you can take your wife,” he said.

DeLaRosa and his partners have “been looking at other establishments in our travels and seeing neat stuff in larger metropolitan areas, and even smaller areas, and menu items that I’d like to see in the Tri-Cities,” he said.

He said the bar scene in Seattle, Tacoma, Portland and Phoenix were an inspiration to his team.

“I was in a totally different field of business before, so this is a new endeavor for all of us,” DeLaRosa said. “It’s a project we’ve been talking about for a couple of years, and it finally came to a point where it was like, let’s just do it.”

So, what’s in a name? DeLaRosa said that “Silo’s” is an homage to the Columbia Basin’s agricultural heritage, referencing the number of grain silos that once dotted the area.

DeLaRosa described Silo’s aesthetic as “kind of a rustic industrial look with a lot of piping and raw materials.”

TV screens will punctuate the wall space and the venue will offer a mixture of seating options. High-top tables will predominate, but there will be low-top seating for those who prefer it.

Architects from the local Wave Design Group designed the building, and Kennewick-based Conner Construction Co. is the general contractor.

DeLaRosa said dirt officially started moving Aug. 20.

Commercial building permits filed with the city of Kennewick by Leslie Road Development, of which VC Enterprises is an LLC, for new construction, plumbing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning value the project at $910,000, though DeLaRosa said the most recent estimates are coming in lower than originally anticipated.

Though, he added, “just in kitchen material and interior dining stuff, we’re looking at a half-million alone.”

A little less than half of the 5,621-square-foot building will be devoted to Silo’s full-service kitchen, which, as DeLaRosa explained, will enable Silo’s to “do a lot more things than your local brew pubs will be doing.”

Though the official menu is still being drafted, DeLaRosa said there will be a lot of “things you don’t see normally in a bar.”

He said that Silo’s will be putting its own twist on the increasingly popular tapas-style cuisine. It also will offer “soups, salads and stuff like that so everything isn’t just greasy and deep-fried,” DeLaRosa said.

Tying into the agricultural community that surrounds Tri-Cities, Silo’s team plans to source many of its ingredients locally.

“We’re going to offer healthy choices, gluten-free and the natural products … everything is going that direction, so it’s a good time to offer that in a bar-type atmosphere,” DeLaRosa said.

With its location right off the freeway, Silo’s is coming in on the steady wave of development filling available land along West Clearwater Avenue. CG Public House (formerly The Country Gentleman) up the road at 9221 W. Clearwater Ave. underwent a significant remodel in 2017.

In the past five-plus years, significant residential growth has occurred in this part of Kennewick -- one of the city’s last frontiers -- with multiple neighborhoods filling in the spaces between the scattering of formerly isolated housing developments and rural estates.

Kadlec Urgent Care opened in 2016 and more businesses have followed suit, with more expected, thanks to the opening of the Bob Olsen Parkway, connecting Clearwater to the growing Southridge area.

“We talked to a lot of people out there,” DeLaRosa said. “And everyone’s always wondering why something hasn’t moved out there, so we decided to be the ones to do it.”