After nearly two years of litigation, demolition of Sumner’s Ryan House is proceeding July 24-26. Contractors will salvage reusable items from the house that can be safely removed. All salvaged items will be safely stored and made available for the Ryan family to retrieve.
“This house has served us well for 100 years, and we wish it could have been longer. At the same time, discovering its structural failures was an unexpected shock. Thank goodness we started the project when we did, ensuring no one was hurt in that building,” said Mayor Kathy Hayden.
“We had a great dream for renovating this house, but we couldn’t pursue that dream at the expense of everything else,” said Councilmember Barbara Bitetto. “We had the unenviable task of deciding when enough was enough and having to tell staff to stop. I think we did the right thing, hard as it was, to protect people’s safety and to wisely use people’s limited tax dollars. The deed asked for a park, and we’re finally going to honor Lucy Ryan’s wishes.”
Built in stages through the 1860s-1890s, the house was on land given to the City by four Ryan family members to first serve as the Sumner library and thereafter as a park to honor their mother, Lucy V. Ryan. The 1926 deed required that the house remain for at least five years; instead, it remained and served as the city’s library until the late 1970s, when the Sumner Historical Society converted the home to a museum. In 2018, the City began a project to renovate the house, successfully receiving over $1.5 million in grant funding. Contractor Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.began a structural assessment prior to construction, revealing a surprisingly dangerous condition, amounting to nearly complete structural failure. When structural engineers instructed City staff to open up certain walls for additional inspection, the second story floorboards fell in and nearly missed striking a worker. The City’s Building Official determined that the Ryan House was an unsafe structure and red-tagged it. With additional information about the condition of the house, and a cost estimate from the structural engineering firm exceeding the funding, in 2023 the Sumner City Council voted to change direction and develop the park without the house.
In 2023, a ceiling collapse and split studs were part of the discoveries of the structural assessment.
One local citizen group filed a lawsuit, which resulted in the judge determining that the demolition permit contradicted certain provisions of the City’s Comprehensive Plan. Since the City had already begun its comprehensive plan update process, the judge directed the City to first amend those provisions of the comprehensive plan before demolition would be permitted. The comprehensive plan was updated in January 2025, and all of the provisions that contradicted the demolition were removed through a public process.
In February, the City started the environmental review process for another anticipated demolition permit. On April 1, the SEPA official issued a mitigated determination of non-significance (MDNS) for demolition of the Ryan House. A group named “Save Ryan House” filed two appeals of the MDNS, one administrative and through LUPA in Superior Court, among other legal claims. Both the Superior Court judge and the hearing examiner dismissed the appeals.
