Nearly four years have passed since the owner of a large parcel on the block south of Safeway on Auburn Way South first leveled several buildings there.

Not to open up a vista on lovely Mount Rainier, but to make way for a four-story, 90-room, 40,000-square-foot Hilton Hotel.

To the eye, not much has happened there since.

Because, said Jeff Tate, community development director for the city of Auburn, the Tru-By-Hilton project, “near permit ready” as recently as 2019, appears to be a no-go.

“According to the architect, the project is basically dead,” Tate said Tuesday. “They haven’t formally withdrawn their application, since it is possible that things could change. But he is reasonably sure that the hotel project is not going to move forward.”

Plans showed the hotel sharing parking and access with adjacent property owners and businesses, among them the Spunky Monkey, with street frontage to the north, south and east, and its main entrance from Auburn Way South.

A major hang up for the developer, however, was securing property rights to realize the complex project, which called for the aggregation of different parcels with different buildings on them, the elimination of various structures and property lines, and working with different property owners to effect purchases.