Hotel Marysville now entombed as ‘Mount Marysville.’ How long will the rubble remain?

“Gone, but not forgotten,” the old saying goes.

But in the case of Hotel Marysville, the landmark isn’t quite gone and — especially for Highway 70 commuters — is certainly not forgotten.

Rather, it’s gone, but entombed.

At the corner of E Street and Fifth Street in Marysville rises Mount Marysville, a more than 10-foot high mound of brick, debris and whatever else went down with the old hotel, encased in a concrete spray and covering hundreds of feet of the downtown corner lot. A chain link fence separates the lumpy, gray mound from the free-flowing traffic the hotel’s destruction had blocked for months.

“In the meantime, that mountain looks a hell of a lot better than that hotel did,” said Mayor Chris Branscum.

To some it’s a symbol of progress from months of troubles caused by the fire-ravaged hotel and partial closure of the thoroughfare beside it, which created traffic headaches and related economic problems.

To others it amounts to what’s effectively an odd, albeit temporary, sarcophagus, holding the remains of the historic building that city officials bid “good riddance” and demolished in December.

Mount Marysville is temporary, but just how temporary is the question.

What’s the plan?

Marysville officials sought an Environmental Protection Agency grant to pay for the removal of the rubble left from the hotel’s demolition, but were deemed ineligible for the most recent grant cycle and will have to reapply, Branscum said.

The cost of moving the mountain, so to speak, depends on whether the pile is deemed hazardous. If found nonhazardous, relocating it could cost roughly $500,000 or more, Branscum said. If it’s hazardous, it would need to be moved to a designated site farther away, and could cost several million dollars.

“It could be months and it could be more than a year before that pile is cleared but we should know the answer to that question, which it will be, within a reasonable amount of time,” Branscum said.

‘Questions of its own’

Hotel Marysville caught fire late June 16 and burned throughout the night, gutting the five-story landmark that loomed over downtown, boarded up and unused for decades.

The question of what to do with the building evolved into a months-long legal dispute between city officials and Feather River Plaza LLC, the hotel’s owner.

The back-and-forth involved unanswered violation notices, claims of safety concerns — including possible asbestos — and legal orders.

First a Yuba County judge ruled that the city needed permission from hotel owners to knock down the hotel, limiting an emergency declaration the city made in the fire’s wake.

Then a city-appointed panel of building examiners ruled that hotel owners must pay to demolish the building, which at that point was said to possibly have asbestos and structural concerns, making it a public risk.

Health concerns related to asbestos arose after the fire, but whether the building had that toxic substance, although “plausible,” was not verified at the time, Branscum said. City officials are now negotiating to have the mound sampled for hazardous materials, to narrow their options for moving it.

As the stalemate continued, the city filed a lawsuit against hotel ownership seeking $5 million in damages, ultimately leading to a settlement in November that cleared the way for the building’s demise. Hotel owners agreed to pay $700,000 and transfer ownership of the property to the city.

In turn, city officials moved forward with plans to knock down the hotel and reopen the section of Highway 70 that had been closed since the fire.

Demolition began Dec. 11, the same day that Bidwell Mansion, another historic Northern California landmark, was destroyed by an arsonist in Chico about 50 miles north. About a month later, the hotel was knocked down and covered in gunite, effectively a spray-on concrete.

Where the hotel once stood, Mount Marysville sat.

“The mound was a solution to one problem and it presents questions of its own,” Branscum said, of which the city is working to resolve.

‘Happy that it’s gone’

Although an eyesore to some, for many, Mount Marysville signifies a relief that Highway 70 has reopened and that nearly six months of disruption have subsided.

The time that the north lanes of the highway were closed near the hotel affected neighboring downtown businesses in different ways.

“I lost $5,000 in sales the first month,” said Douglas Zwolski, owner of Candy Box on D Street. “It caused so much disruption.”

Downtown traffic increased during the highway closure, but not in a way that helped most businesses.

Some drivers rerouted through D Street — the heart of downtown — away from the designated detour, causing a steady and slow moving stream of cars that may have further deterred potential customers. The traffic also caused safety and parking issues, particularly with difficulty backing out of parking spaces into the flow of vehicles.

Now that the hotel’s gone and the highway reopened, Zwolski’s not bothered by the strange concrete pile that remains.

“We got our parking back, we got our street back,” he said. “It affected all the businesses in town.”

For some dealers selling merchandise from Sissy’s Attic, a downtown antique store that functions similar to a co-op, business wasn’t down much after the fire.

“We didn’t see a lot of change,” said dealer Sue Doven.

But she isn’t sad to see the old building go.

“We’re happy that it’s gone,” she added.

Mount Marysville, for however it looks and despite the ongoing problems its impending removal presents, has solved the day-to-day frustrations Marysville residents and commuters lived through for months.

“There’s always that small core of people who, if they gold plated it they’d still bitch because of the glare or something,” said Debra Smith, also a dealer.

After making it through the dying days of Hotel Marysville, what’s a few more months of Mount Marysville?

“It doesn’t matter to me if it stays or goes,” Doven said. “It will be wonderful to get a new business there, but it makes no difference to me.”

This story was originally published March 16, 2025 at 5:00 AM.