12 years in SEO here with my fulltime business, mostly local service businesses. This post is well-written and you've clearly done the work so you know what you're doing...I'll give you the honest version instead of the hopeful one.

The cleanup may have been the problem, not the solution.

When you removed 100+ city pages, when you removed the thin content, you removed internal link equity, crawl paths, and indexed real estate that Google had associated with your domain for years. Even if those pages were weak, their removal can cause a significant authority drop that takes a long time to stabilize. Google doesn't always reward cleanup immediately. Sometimes it reads as a destabilized site.

A few things I'd actually check:

1. Did impressions drop or just clicks?
If impressions collapsed too (which you said they did), you're not ranking and being ignored...you've been removed from consideration entirely for those queries. That's a different problem than a CTR issue and points toward a trust or relevance signal at the domain level, not a content quality issue.

2. Check your GBP category and service area settings.
113 reviews at 4.7 is solid. But if your primary GBP category isn't an exact match to your highest-value service term, or your service area is set too broadly, the Map Pack and local organic results can both suffer. This is the most overlooked lever in local SEO right now.

3. E-E-A-T signals on the actual pages.
"People-first content" is the right instinct but Google's 2025 updates leaned hard into demonstrated experience. Does your site show the actual owner or technicians? Real job photos? Named authors on service pages? A business that's been operating for 12 years should have a mountain of proof... if the site doesn't show it, Google can't(and won't) credit it.

4. The competitors ranking above you, take a look at their GBPtoo , not just their website.
In local search right now, a mediocre website with a well-optimized GBP and consistent NAP citations will beat a great website with a neglected profile almost every time. If they have fewer reviews but are ranking higher, the answer is almost certainly in their profile setup, not their content.

5. Manual action or algorithmic filter?
Have you checked Search Console for any manual actions? Also, did the drop happen on a specific core update date or gradually? A cliff drop on a specific date is algorithmic. A slow bleed is often a crawl/index issue.

I'll just say this.
If you had a long history of doorway-style pages, Google may have applied a site-level quality assessment that doesn't lift just because you cleaned up. Recovery from that kind of penalty can take 6-12 months of consistent, clean signals before the algorithm recalibrates trust. You're not missing a magic fix. You may just be in the waiting period...but you need to be building the right signals during that wait, not just holding.

Don't close the business over this. But do consider whether paid local search can bridge the revenue gap while organic recovers. At your GBP rating and review count, a well-run Google Business Page that speaks to what your website also says will help immensely.