A fire destroyed Hotel Marysville — but could it mean revival for the historic downtown?

The burned-out building loomed over the city’s downtown.

The faded marquee on its facade was a faint reminder of long ago when its name didn’t form the tail end of a question: What to do with the Hotel Marysville?

The historic hotel at Fifth and E streets that once greeted stars of screen, sports and politics has sat vacant for decades, falling ever deeper into disrepair, an abandoned symbol of downtown Marysville’s struggles over the years.

But the June 15 blaze that destroyed Marysville’s starcrossed landmark raises a new question: the future of the city’s long-struggling downtown beyond the now-gutted hotel.

Residents and those who drive through the Yuba County town, bookended by the Yuba and Feather rivers and about a hour north of Sacramento, know the hotel well. But few in this city of 13,000 remember when the building wasn’t dormant.

Residents also know well the failed attempts by city and business leaders, the hotel’s various owners and property managers, to revive it.

Chuck Smith, a former journalist, a public information officer for neighboring Sutter County, is a lifelong Marysville resident who chronicles the history of his hometown and its namesake hotel on his Facebook page, The Museum of Many Other Things.

“Marysville’s been through a lot and there’s a sense of missed opportunity (but) it opens up new possibilities when the weight and the history of the Hotel Marysville go away,” Smith said “It’s also going to remove a point of contention within the community about this.”

“While the fire was unfortunate, there is hope that the demolition (if that is determined to be the only option) will certainly provide new development opportunities,” said Brynda Stranix, president and CEO of Yuba-Sutter Economic Development Corp. in an email. “Often, one new project will spur additional investments. I anticipate that redeveloping this central intersection will contribute to a broader revitalization for Marysville.”

The roughly half-acre site could be developed as a mixed-use project with retail and residential components and perhaps lead to further projects, Stranix said. The demolition , Stranix said, could mean an influx of local jobs. The county’s unemployment rate is 6%.

The Hotel Marysville “has been the topic of conversation for decades: ‘If you tear it down, will it become another Starbucks?’” said Dana Burroughs, owner of vintage and antique store Sissy’s Attic on downtown Marysville’s D Street. “But that area has a whole lot of potential. Once that building is razed, that property is going to be worth more.”

Immediate concerns

But weeks after the blaze, Marysville — and its historic downtown — face more immediate concerns.

City leaders have declared a local state of emergency to address the dangerously compromised structure sitting in the center of town. The damage done and the resulting street closures have shuttered businesses closest to the site and ground sales at other downtown shops to a near-halt.

“The fire and subsequent safety concerns have led to significant revenue losses for local businesses,” Stranix said. “Those within 105 feet of the hotel must remain closed due to potential structural collapse, while other are affected by road closures and traffic rerouting. Businesses closest to the site report a 100% loss in revenue with others experiencing losses between 50-75%. This is our most immediate concern.”

The building is also an “asbestos danger zone,” according to a report obtained by the Marysville Appeal-Democrat, which has chronicled the fire and the war of words between city officials and the syndicate that owns the building, known as the Feather River Plaza LLC.

Marysville officials are also working with Caltrans to divert traffic off Highway 70 — Marysville’s E Street and the main north-south route through town — to avoid Fifth and E. Meanwhile, city and local economic development leaders are trying to reassure frustrated downtown merchants that they are not being forgotten while convincing out-of-towners that downtown is still open for business.

Valerie Tootle and husband, Ron, own Tootle Custom Cutting Butcher Shop on Third Street. The shop’s display case, normally stocked with thick Porterhouse steaks, savory sausages and assorted other cuts, was bare on a recent afternoon as Ron and a pair of butchers worked through slabs of beef in the cutting room.

The Tootles had pulled the cuts out of the case.

No foot traffic, Tootle explained. She motioned to the orange pylons lined up along Third Street outside the shop’s plate glass window, part of the detour directing motorists around the downtown core.

“How does that help?” Tootle said, motioning to the pylons. “They do realize it’s costing all of us customers. The time for talking is over. It’s time for action. (The city) needs to start freeing the streets so people can get their livelihoods back.”

It’s county fair season, so Tootle’s will stay busy processing the beef, hogs and other livestock sold at auction. The shop’s custom processing operation draws customers from Modesto to Reno and into Oregon. That’s keeping the doors open, she said.

“If it wasn’t for the fact I’m doing custom processing, I’d be closed down,” she said.

“We are actively working to support downtown businesses by informing the public that they are open and in need of community support,” Stranix said. “We urge residents to visit and support theses businesses during the challenging time.”

That urging couldn’t come soon enough for Burroughs. Her Sissy’s Attic on D Street remained open, but her receipts on the Friday following the fire totaled just $84. Saturday’s take was about the same, Burroughs said.

Still, Burroughs remains resilient. In Marysville’s downtown, the fire and its aftermath, Burroughs said, are just the latest test.

“Clean up on aisle ‘this week,’” she said.

Resilience is a hard-won response here. A sign posted to a building’s window above D Street reads: “Every day is your chance to make Marysville a little bit better.” Painted on a wall-sized mural at Covillaud Elementary School near downtown: “Together we grow. United we stand.” “Perseverance” is painted on the plate glass of a downtown self-defense studio.

“We were already feeling the momentum before (the fire) happened. It’s been ongoing for several years,” Burroughs said. “We lost a lot of longtime businesses over COVID,” but new businesses have begun to sprout, she said.

Faded fortunes

Built for $400,000 in 1925 and ’26, equivalent to $7 million in today’s dollars, the Hotel Marysville was once the jewel of its downtown, a cosmopolitan destination that drew comparisons to San Francisco’s finest hotels. Nearly 500 guests were invited to its April 1926 grand opening.

The hotel later attracted the celebrities of the day: barnstorming baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Hollywood stars Clark Gable and Bing Crosby, and cowboy crooner Roy Rogers, who was said to have led his horse up and down the hotel’s staircases.

“It was a nice place to stay. It made Marysville mean something,” Smith said. “The Hotel Marysville gave it a San Francisco feel. It was totally a community project. The hotel, it was the core of the community, it was economic development. It was a community building a hotel to attract tourists.”

But by the early 1980s, its fortunes had faded.

The hotel, mired in years of disputes between its owners and renters, had become “the biggest den of iniquity we have,” then-Marysville council member William Young said in 1981, according to the Marysville Appeal-Democrat. “Arrests of drunks and derelicts had become a common occurrence,” the newspaper wrote.

The Hotel Marysville closed for good in the late ‘80s. Legal battles, a revolving door of owners and plans to restore the hotel to a version of its former glory, came and went with the decades.

Plans for apartments, Caltrans District 3 offices and mixed-use plans all came and went, waylaid by the high cost of renovation.

The hotel’s final renovation plan came a few years ago when the building was purchased by Lance Robbins, founder of Urban Smart Growth. The company had a track record of rehabilitating distressed buildings in Los Angeles and Robbins had a grand vision to create a hub of housing and nightlife for the city at the nationally registered historic landmark.

That proposal faded when Robbins, 76, died last year. The building had been on the market since November with an asking price of $925,000, a fire-sale price for a building likely to cost millions to bring to code.

“It’s not been a shortage of ideas or creativity — it’s money. That’s one of the reasons why it was still standing,” Smith said. “You have a different conversation now. The ‘What now?’ conversation — that’s a conversation of opportunity for the community.”

Variations of those “what now?” conversations have been happening for years now in the shadow of the Hotel Marysville.

A decade ago, a task force of residents and business owners led what was known as the Bounce Back Initiative.

The strategy included reimagining the city’s downtown as a “Main Street” day trip destination of shops, restaurants and boutiques that lean in to Marysville’s rich history and re-energizing other commercial districts across the city, stemming the decades-long exodus of businesses from Marysville and setting the city on a path toward prosperity.

‘We just have to get past this time’

Years later, the results along the red-brick storefronts that line Marysville’s D Street are mixed — some storefronts remain empty, others promise businesses are “coming soon,” or sport signs that they have moved across the Feather River to Yuba City.

Yet others have persevered. D Street was mostly quiet on a recent Monday, but downtown mainstay the Brick Coffee House Cafe, with its midtown-y vibe (think Old Soul at The Weatherstone), was enjoying a solid noontime lunch rush.

The Brick’s manager Angie Aberasturi lives in downtown Marysville. Aberasturis have lived in Marysville for 150 years. At 47, Aberasturi would have been a child when the Hotel Marysville closed for good.

She looked on with the throng as a piece of Marysville history was consumed by the inferno the night of June 15. On Monday, Aberasturi showed a reporter a cell phone video of the fire raging in the darkness.

“I’m 47 — I don’t ever remember it being open (but) I’d hear stories about how Marysville was the happening place,” Aberasturi said. “It’s a part of the landscape that my family’s grown up with. It’s emotional. This is a small town. It’s sad. “Our grandparents, great-grandparents, it was part of their daily lives. It feels like a piece of you, then it’s gone.”

But Aberasturi is hopeful.

“There’s a string of new, younger business owners who care about what’s here,” she said. “It’s already feeling like there’s a new energy — business owners who are really passionate about doing something. With that energy that’s coming down here, I’m hopeful that something gets put in that respects the history of this town. The bones are there. That’s why it is exciting. We just have to get past this time.”

The Bee’s Vincent Medina contributed to this story.