Time is running out to save this historic East Pierce County home from demolition
Update: Nick Biermann with the Save Ryan House group sent an update Dec. 18, 2024, after the meeting with city.
“Save Ryan House is going to keep a dialogue open with the city and keep working toward a solution,” his email said. “We also ask community members who want to help to get involved in our fundraising efforts. We are seeking additional contributions to help close the gap and get even closer to the $2.2 million the city is requesting to continue the project.”
He said potential donors can reach the group at 253-544-1807 or SaveRyanHouse@outlook.com.
“They can also contact the city of Sumner directly and say they want to help fund the Ryan House restoration,” he wrote.
Initial story: The clock is ticking for those raising funds to try to save the historic Ryan House in downtown Sumner.
City officials say the building at 1228 Main St. isn’t safe to enter and that liability concerns mean they can’t leave the structure in that state much longer while residents try to raise seven figures to restore it.
“It is an unsafe structure,” city spokesperson Carmen Palmer told The News Tribune last week. “We have red-tagged it like we’d red-tag any building.”
That designation tells firefighters and others not to enter a building, because it is dangerous. The city wouldn’t give someone years and years to fix such problems with their home, Palmer said, and the city holds itself to that same standard out of fairness.
“It is our job to make sure buildings in Sumner are safe for people,” she said. “We’re not going to give ourselves extra time.”
The demolition process, which would include a State Environmental Policy Act review, would probably happen in winter and spring 2025, she said. The city has said it needs at least $2.2 million in private fundraising to consider saving the house.
“Absent the funding, we would proceed with demolition,” she said.
Save Ryan House, a group of residents trying to preserve the home, has a meeting with the city this week.
Nick Biermann with the Save Ryan House group told The News Tribune last week that the group is not releasing how much residents have pledged to save the house but that it has significant commitments it is working to finalize.
“We’re open to ideas and partnerships that help get us there,” he said.
He said the group understands the city’s concerns about liability and that the building is red-tagged.
“We’re not maintaining that the city is wrong on any of those kinds of things,” he said. “We want to work with the city to address those issues first. That would be our primary concern, that the building is stable and is safe, first, before anything else could be done.”
The land could become a park
The house, built in the 1850s, served as Sumner’s town hall, post office, library and museum.
It was home to the city’s first mayor, George Ryan, and his wife, postmistress Lucy Ryan. The city has owned the house for nearly 100 years, longer than anyone else, Palmer said. There’s a picture of the house from when the city obtained it, she said, that shows ivy growing through the walls of the cabin.
The city planned to restore the home, but damage to the building was more extensive and the cost to repair it was higher than anticipated.
When workers took a piece of flooring out of the second floor of part of the structure, the whole floor came down, Palmer said. An addition on the back, where the barn was moved up against the house and turned into a kitchen, is falling away from the house. The gap keeps widening, she said.
The council voted in September 2023 to demolish it and to turn the house into a park to honor Lucy Ryan, which city officials say the deed calls for.
“The land the house is on was deeded to the city by the Ryan heirs for a park in memory of their mother Lucy V. Ryan,” the city’s website says. “The deed anticipated the house being torn down in the 1930s and contains very specific covenants prohibiting any new structures being built or even additions to the house.”
A descendant and others sued the city over the demolition process, and a Pierce County Superior Court judge ruled that Sumner couldn’t proceed with demolition unless the city updated its comprehensive plan, The News Tribune reported in March. Part of the plan called for renovating the house.
Now the city is on the verge of passing its new comprehensive plan Jan. 6. That plan leaves the future of the house open.
“Keeping it is a possibility,” Palmer said. “Demolishing it is a possibility.”’
‘The more time we have, the better.’
Biermann said the Save Ryan House group’s hope is that the city sees its “commitment and determination.”
“We’re not just telling them: ‘Save the house.’ We are doing things on our own end, too,” he said.
The group has been meeting with structural engineers, historic preservation experts and others, he said, to learn what restoration would take.
“We want people to know that we’re doing a lot of hard work behind the scenes,” he said.
The group’s ballpark estimates, he said, makes it hopeful there’s a way to save the home for significantly less than the city estimates.
The group would like to work with the city to try to narrow the scope and lower the cost of the work, he said.
“The more time we have the better, because we really do feel like there’s a solution,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of people that support our efforts and really do want to get the house saved. I think it would be tragic if we just gave up on it.”
‘No one wants to lose it’
Palmer said she’s heard arguments that the city should just stabilize the home for now, but she said there are overlapping issues that mean the bulk of the work really needs to be done at once. She said in an email that the city did consider ways to limit costs when it was looking to renovate the house.
“In the end, any of these cuts would have eliminated more revenue than they would have saved in expenses,” she wrote.
When it comes to what it would cost to do the work now, she said the city doesn’t have a scope or a project. As construction costs rise and the house has continued to deteriorate, the city would have to start over and do new assessments.
“What city staff have told Save the Ryan House is that if they do indeed have $2.2 million now, staff would ask council if they” want to have a discussion about the future of the house, she wrote.
Palmer said about 10 years ago she nominated the project for the TV show, “This Old House,” on which experts evaluate how to restore aging homes.
“When I say we got creative, we got creative,” she said.
She grew up watching the show with her dad, she said, and knew that they had only done one other project on the West Coast. She never heard back.
“No one wants to lose it,” Palmer said about the Ryan House. “The city doesn’t want to lose it. But no one seems to be coming up with the financial energy to change the outcome.”
News Tribune archives contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 17, 2024 at 11:17 AM.
