Restoration Oroville

Looking up at the majestic old Oroville Inn, one can imagine its circular driveway bustling with activity of a bygone era—cars arriving with well-dressed ladies and men, who are ushered through the grand entrance into the main parlor for an evening filled with dinner, drinks and dancing. During the day, shoppers browse the vast windows of dress shops and boutiques, and ladies enjoy tea at the coffeehouse while men discuss local politics over a beer at the tavern.

The inn, situated on a large swath of Bird Street in downtown Oroville, was a huge attraction when it was built in 1929. Famous politicians and celebrities—from Herbert Hoover to Charlie Chaplin—walked through its doors, having been invited to speak from the elaborate second-story speaker platform that overlooks the entry hall.

“The inn played a major role for many years because it was the main place to stay for visitors coming to Oroville,” said James Lenhoff, a leading local historian. “It had several stores, a beautiful banquet hall and lobby. It was very impressive.”

Lenhoff, who is founder and president of the Oroville Heritage Council, nominated the inn for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, ensuring its place in the city’s future.

“There’s always been talk of tearing it down and replacing it with a parking lot, but that won’t happen,” he said.

Today, the exterior paint is peeling. The once-lush courtyard garden was years ago paved over with a parking lot. And inside, water damage has pulled the plaster clear off one of the main arched entryways and has all but destroyed the ballroom floor. Graffiti on the walls and broken or missing pieces of the architecture bear witness to illegal entry over the years—the building’s been vacant since 2010.

But the days of bustling activity at the inn stand to experience a resurgence. Last October, the city of Oroville agreed to sell the property for $400,000 to real estate mogul Orville “Bud” Tracy, who has a long track record of restoring historic buildings in Butte County. Work already has begun to remove asbestos roofing and lead paint. Scaffolding went up last week to begin work on the rest of the exterior, and the interior is being examined and plans made for renovation.

“I first studied the Oroville Inn in 1997; that’s when I got a full set of original floor plans,” Tracy said during a recent interview at his Oroville office, which sits just a block from the inn. He has big plans for the place, too, which include housing guests who will not only guarantee the inn will thrive, but also will patronize nearby restaurants and shops and thus inject new life into the surrounding area.

“It will be a major rejuvenation to have that building restored and occupied again,” Lenhoff said. “Because of its size and location, it’s kind of like an anchor for downtown Oroville.”

Tracy is a passionate man when it comes to local history. Walking through the hallway to the downtown Oroville office of Tracy Realty Co., the walls are lined with historical photographs. More decorate his modest office.

“History is critical,” he said. “If we don’t remember, we lose so much of our heart.”

It’s safe to say Tracy’s heart is entrenched in Butte County. In 1911, his father, Orville Tracy Sr., opened the Tracy Realty Co. in downtown Chico. The younger Tracy was born in Durham, but spent most of his formative years in Chico, tagging along with his father on various jobs.

“Even as a little kid, I used to run around the basements of old buildings,” he said. “Starting when I was 13 years old, he made me do an apprenticeship every summer. I cursed him intently then, but now I’m so thankful.”

Apprenticeships offered Tracy skills in everything from carpentry to electrical installation, skills that come in handy when he needs something fixed or refurbished. In 1971, he took over the business from his father and his first solo project, what his wife affectionately calls “my first pickle out of the jar,” was the Garden Walk Mall in downtown Chico. He assessed the interior, was able to create storefronts inside that offered unique spaces and a warm feel. He’s since given a similarly old downtown Oroville building a comparable treatment. That indoor “mini mall” is called Prospector’s Alley and features a mix of retail shops, counseling offices, massage services and a yoga studio.

“I like changing the use of a space,” Tracy said, “figuring out something new to do with an old building to save it.”

Tracy’s worked on several other iconic Chico buildings, including two of Broadway’s beloved structures, the Silberstein and Phoenix. He also played a major role in developing the commercial corridor along East 20th Street and East Park Avenue. Tracy later worked with the Oroville Sports Club and Butte Community Bank on their Oroville properties, and during his visits there, he said he always felt the area needed a facelift, revitalization. It was the then-chief operating officer of Butte Community Bank who solidified his efforts in the nearby community.

“John Stanton was the reason I came to Oroville,” Tracy said. “I made him a promise that I’d help him fix up Oroville.”

The day he made that promise, Stanton had a heart attack and died. Tracy finished his work on the development of an Oroville branch of Butte Community Bank. Then, as a tribute to Stanton, he bought property on an adjacent corner, where an old gas station had been. He cleaned up the site, put in a building there and dubbed it Stanton’s Corner.

“Once the walls went up, we had a tenant in a week,” Tracy said. He’d made his first mark on Oroville and shortly after opened his office there, which is where he’s located much of the time these days. His daughter, Arwen Funk, oversees operations in his Chico office.

The Oroville Inn is a perfect example of finding new uses for an old building. It originally was built for mixed uses, and it will remain that way. What once was a thriving hotel will become a residence hall for students of the Northwest Lineman College, which opened an Oroville campus in 2006. The college, which offers training for electrical linework, needs a place to house students. It has increased its enrollment to 240 students per term—there are three terms each year—from just 128 a year ago. Tracy estimates about 85-100 students will be able to live at the inn.

“It will give the students a good place to live at a good rate,” said Tom Schoonover, training manager at Northwest Lineman College. “We’re excited to have that open downtown. It’s good for the community and we want that—we want to improve our community.”

Tracy said he’ll be working with a company called College Housing Services, which will function as the rental manager for the inn. In addition to providing housing for students, a large portion of the first floor retail space will be dedicated to a Lineman Legacy Museum, featuring the history of electricity and electrical work, for which Tracy said he’ll donate the space.

And it’s almost as though the inn is coming full circle with the linemen and electricity museum as tenants, Tracy said. That’s because before the inn was built, the property was home to the Edison Ore-Milling Co., owned by Thomas Edison.

Walking through the residential portion of the hotel, which occupies the second, third and fourth floors, it’s more difficult to see the elegance of the past. Over the years, it’s been used for various purposes, but the original 92 guest rooms were turned into a more modest 65 apartments in the 1980s.

The last time they were occupied, about 10 years ago, they were used for low-income residents and for a drug-rehab program, Tracy said.

In 1999, Walnut Hill Estate Enterprises LLC member Jonothon Benefield bought the property and rented out the apartments as well as some of the retail spaces. By 2006, however, due to the disrepair of the building, the city of Oroville required that all tenants be evacuated, according to Oroville Mercury-Register reports. By 2010, the city pointed to more than 600 health and safety code violations and the property was taken into receivership. Two years later, Oroville paid the $330,000 receiver’s bond, along with $173,661 in back taxes for the inn, but since then had done little with the property.

“It was left to rot,” Tracy said, visibly disappointed. He’d actually been called in by the receiver to caretake the property in 2010. He worked on the roofs and other parts of the building to protect it from further structural damage.

One of the unique features of the hotel is its wood floors throughout, which Tracy hopes to maintain with the help of a local flooring company, which also will work on putting in a new ballroom floor. But with the linemen itching to move in, after ensuring the viability and safety of the structure, the residential part of the building is his first item of business. Last week, he studied each room—no two are exactly alike—to determine how many occupants it could accommodate. He hopes to have tenants in those rooms by November 2016.

As for the rest of the inn, much renovation will be needed to restore it to its former glory. A room in the very front, an addition likely tacked on in the 1950s, was Tracy’s first major undertaking when he started construction last week. As workers chipped away at it, he beamed. “I’ve been wanting to get rid of that thing for years,” he said. That addition covered one of the large windows into the banquet room.

The first floor of the inn is divided into many different rooms and storefronts. The main part of the building includes an entry parlor, banquet room and ballroom. Tracy has located all of the missing chandeliers—several were sold at auction years ago—and ensured they’ll be put back into place. He’s also been holding meetings each Thursday afternoon with locals who remember stories about the inn. One woman came in, he said, and remembered the drapes quite clearly, from the color to the texture and even the fabric type. She’s offered to help recreate them.

There’s also a large kitchen, which opens both into the ballroom and into a separate retail space whose doors face Bird Street. Tracy envisions a steakhouse (a la 5th Street in Chico) moving in there. Next to that space was a large tavern that could be another bar or might be better suited to another use, he said.

On the first floor underneath the residences, facing Miners Alley, will be the electricity museum and a small store selling merchandise from the Northwest Lineman College. And a large retail space at the corner of Bird and Downer streets would be the perfect spot for a neighborhood market, Tracy said. He’s already in talks with a potential tenant.

“Ten years ago, downtown Oroville was all antique shops and thrift stores,” Tracy said. “We’re down to three antique shops now. And I like Starbucks, but I wouldn’t put one in downtown. Downtown is the last bastion of small business—I feel very strongly about that.”

Part of his solution, which has been different from others’, is bringing clientele along with business. Having 85-100 students living in downtown will ensure clients for a market, restaurants and other businesses there. The college’s Schoonover agreed, saying that was a plus when discussing housing options for students.

“They’ll be downtown, which will help boost the economy downtown,” he said. “Community is very important to us.”

A few blocks over, Tracy walked into the Prospector’s Alley mini mall, which he renovated, and up the stairs at the rear of the building. This will be his pet project sometime next year, he said, after progress is made on the inn. He walked through the wooden guts of a former brothel and hotel that dates back to 1872. His vision for this space, which has 25 rooms, is for it to become a dorm of sorts for Butte College women. (Then there’d be both male and female college students living downtown.)

Walking along Myers, Montgomery and Bird streets, he reminisced about the history—did you know there used to be glass panels in the sidewalks at the corner of Myers and Montgomery, which shined light down on the saloon below? And he seemed genuinely excited for the future of downtown Oroville, which already is brighter and more bustling than it was a decade ago.

Historian Lenhoff is likewise optimistic.

“Throughout the downtown there are a lot of new things that are going on,” he said. “These different things that are starting to take place are showing that Oroville has a good life ahead of it.”