POCATELLO — The charred shell of the Monarch Building has loomed over the 200 block of West Center Street for more than decade — a stubborn reminder of what Historic Downtown Pocatello lost in a September 2014 fire and what it has struggled to reclaim ever since.

This summer, the building has a date with a wrecking ball.

Pocatello Mayor Mark Dahlquist told the Idaho State Journal on Wednesday the Pocatello Development Authority has selected a demolition firm and is finalizing costs and a schedule for the building’s demolition, with work expected to begin this spring or summer.

Following an official Request for Qualifications process, the PDA has chosen the Eugene Oregon-based Staton Company, which specializes in structural demolition of historic downtown buildings.

“It’s a very intricate process,” Dahlquist said. “We were pretty picky about what firm we needed to select — one that really specializes in these older buildings and demos.”

Founded in 1971 and based in Eugene, Oregon, Staton Companies has built a reputation across the Western United States as a go-to firm for complicated and high-stakes demolition work, according to its website. The company’s resume includes mills, industrial plants, bridges, freeway overpasses and dams — including a job the website describes as the largest dam demolition project in North American history, the Elwha Dam removal near Port Angeles, Washington. The firm employs more than 60 professionals and completes over 100 jobs annually.

The decision to bring down the Monarch closes a long and winding chapter for a building that has outlasted multiple owners, multiple structural assessments and multiple attempts at revival. Constructed in 1909 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Monarch once housed apartments, retail businesses and, for a time, the Pegasus Book Store.

The 2014 fire gutted its interior, collapsed its roof and left the facade exposed to years of weather damage.

More than a decade of tryingIn the years following the fire, Tiffani Wilson and Ali Gorny of Endurance Home Investments purchased the building for roughly $10,000 in 2017 with ambitious plans to transform it into a boutique hotel and monarch butterfly exhibit. They sold bricks from the damaged sections, organized haunted tours and attracted community support, but financing the multimillion-dollar restoration ultimately proved insurmountable.

The pair eventually donated the building to the Pocatello Development Authority, which launched its own request for proposals in 2025, giving developers until this past September to submit redevelopment plans. The PDA hoped to find someone willing to restore the facade or reimagine the site entirely. No one responded.

“We’ve tried and tried,” Dahlquist said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have any takers, and it would just be extremely hard and expensive to try to save that facade.”

With the building continuing to deteriorate — and its facade increasingly deemed a public safety hazard — the PDA moved forward with demolition, Dahlquist said, adding the PDA conducted a detailed request for qualifications process before selecting Staton Company, which has a track record of navigating the particular challenges of razing older brick structures wedged between neighboring buildings.

Demolishing the Monarch will be no easy task. The several-story, roofless building sits between the historic Paris Building to the east and The First National Bar to the west, both of which must be protected during demolition. Dahlquist said the firm plans to construct temporary supports between the structures, and that some of the work will be done by hand given the complexity of the shared walls.

“We don’t want to destroy anything else,” he said.

Timing and traffic

The demolition will coincide with ongoing rehabilitation work on the Center Street Underpass, which has been closed for an extended period. Dahlquist said he views the overlapping timelines as an advantage rather than a complication.

“We’re already working down there on the underpass, and there’s not much traffic on West Center,” he said. “I think our timing is actually optimal.”

At least one lane and a sidewalk on West Center will remain open throughout the process, though brief closures may be necessary at certain points, Dahlquist said.

Dahlquist also said the question of preserving bricks from the demolition — something Wilson and Gorny did during their ownership, selling pieces of the building for $1 apiece — had not yet been formally discussed, but that he intends to raise it with the contractor and PDA.

“I think we need to work with the contractor to save some of those bricks, whether it be reclaiming them for something or mementos,” he said.

Dahlquist pointed to a similar effort following the demolition of Bonneville School, where salvaged bricks were incorporated into the porches at Bonneville Commons.

Sadness, and a clean slateDahlquist, who became abreast of the process late after taking office earlier this year, is candid about how he feels.

“I’m saddened that we lost a historic building,” he said. “Anytime that happens — our downtown is part of a national historic district — my first feeling is sadness.”

But he is equally clear that the decision was not made hastily. Multiple companies have evaluated the building and found it unsalvageable. Structural engineers flagged the facade as a hazard. And after years of inaction, frustration has grown among downtown business owners and residents who have watched the blighted structure sit largely untouched.

“It’s getting to the point where there’s some business owners and folks in historic downtown that are getting very impatient,” Dahlquist said. “We’ve tried, and unfortunately it’s too far gone.”

What comes nextWith the site cleared, Dahlquist said his priority will be making sure whatever replaces the Monarch adds to downtown rather than simply filling a gap.

His leading idea is grand, but not relatively new and is something Gorny and Wilson would likely be proud of. In a perfect world, Dahlquist would love for a hotel to fill the space where the Monarch once stood.

“A community our size not having a downtown hotel is unusual,” he said. “We’re always talking about how we bring more people, more visitors to historic downtown — people with disposable income. If we could get them downtown to spend a night or two, I think that would be a huge uplift.”

Dahlquist noted that the site could be well-suited for new market tax credits, a federal financing tool commonly used for downtown hotel projects, and said he plans to actively market the opportunity to prospective developers. He also pointed out that without the Monarch’s existing facade constraining building height, a future structure could rise five or six stories — something previously impossible on the site.

“You’ve got a clean slate,” he said. “It’s very important that whatever goes there, although it won’t be a historic building, is tasteful and looks historic so it blends into that area.”

Dahlquist was also direct in addressing speculation that the demolition is connected to ongoing discussions about relocating Pocatello City Hall downtown — an idea that started circulating again since his mayoral campaign last fall.

“It’s definitely not phase one of the city’s hidden plan,” he said. “I can honestly and confidently say there has been no connection to that in these discussions.”

For now, the focus is on bringing down what remains of a building that has defined — and in recent years, complicated — the story of Historic Downtown Pocatello for more than a century.

“When one door closes, another one opens,” Dahlquist said. “That’s the mindset I have.”