The Madrona, the 24-room hotel and restaurant on Westside Road that holds two Michelin Keys, has told the state it will close temporarily on Jan. 3 and lay off 77 employees.
The notice, dated Oct. 23, appears in the California Employment Development Department’s WARN report, the state’s running list of planned layoffs and closures. The department lists the action as a temporary closure at 1001 Westside Road with Jan. 3, 2027, as the effective date.
The hotel’s website doesn’t mention a closure. On Tuesday it was promoting holiday parties, a Friday martini cart and a garden supper club. Its online booking engine does: rooms are for sale through the night of Jan. 2, every date checked from Jan. 3 through Jan. 14 returns the message “We are closed,” and rooms are on offer again from Friday, Jan. 15, starting at $643 a night.
That points to a shutdown of about 12 nights. The state’s summary doesn’t say why the hotel is closing or whether the laid-off workers will be rehired when it reopens, and the hotel’s website gives no explanation.
What the notice means
California’s WARN Act requires an employer to give workers and the state 60 days’ written notice before a mass layoff, relocation or closure at a site that has employed 75 or more people in the past year. The Madrona’s notice came 72 days ahead of its closing date.
The law covers a shutdown of operations as well as layoffs, and the state’s report labels each notice permanent or temporary. The Madrona’s is the only temporary closure among the eight Sonoma County notices the department has processed since July 1.
Those eight notices cover 426 workers. The largest is Amy’s Kitchen, which told the state Sept. 17 it will permanently close its Santa Rosa plant and lay off 200 people on Dec. 18. Raley’s filed Oct. 28 for the permanent closure of its Petaluma store, 40 jobs, effective Dec. 10.
5 weeks after Michelin
The closure notice came five weeks after Michelin kept The Madrona on its hotel list. The guide’s Sept. 18 selection left the hotel with the two keys it first earned in 2024, the year Michelin began rating hotels the way it has long rated restaurants. It’s one of six Sonoma County hotels with keys, alongside SingleThread Inn, Montage Healdsburg, The Cottages at Little Saint, The Stavrand in Guerneville and The Sea Ranch Lodge.
The property is the former Madrona Manor, a mansion built in 1881 as a private home for the family of San Francisco entrepreneur John Alexander Paxton, who made his fortune in mining. Designer Jay Jeffers, his brother Kyle Jeffers and general partner Cory Schisler led an investor group that bought it in 2021 for $8.6 million. The hotel had been shut for more than a year when it reopened in April 2022 as The Madrona, after a renovation Sonoma Magazine put at nearly $6 million. The eight-acre estate has 24 rooms spread across the mansion, its carriage house and a cluster of 19th-century bungalows.
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