‘Scary and sad and emotional’: Sumner businesses suffer massive loss in downtown fire

Kurstyn and Christopher Schober rushed out of bed at 4 a.m. Oct. 28. “The bar’s on fire,” their son had told them on the phone. Driving from their home in Edgewood to downtown Sumner, they held a glimmer of hope that Stuck Junction, their family business — and the couple’s retirement plan — might be spared from destruction.

As they crested the hill just east of State Route 167, “You could just see the flames,” Kurstyn Schober recounted last week.

Dozens of emergency units were on the scene of this three-alarm fire, water gushing over the ashes of more than a century’s worth of history.

“We just stood there and watched it in shock,” she said. “Your mind just gets numb. … There’s something so surreal to see something that had felt familiar, that it all of a sudden felt unfamiliar.”

The fire was reported around 3 a.m. in Sumner and quickly escalated to a defensive containment, with crews taming the bulk of flames by 5:15 a.m. It did not spread to the rest of Main Street, where turn-of-the-century brick structures sit side-by-side, but it totaled 1003-1005 Main Street, its three businesses and several offices. At least eight others, from 909 to 1101 Main Street, have been closed due to smoke and water damage to their buildings and inventory.

In addition to Stuck Junction, Whispering Hills Market and The Attic were destroyed, along with the offices of Northwest Java (behind Java Junction and Cafe Siena in Auburn and Tukwila) and State Rep. Drew Stokesbary.

The cause of the fire appears to have been “a warming fire from a couple of transients,” East Pierce Fire & Rescue deputy chief Bill Mack told The News Tribune on Monday. City of Sumner communications director Carmen Palmer would not confirm that detail but said police have handed over their findings to the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office. They expect to file charges by Tuesday.

Behind the Main Street block, The Buttered Biscuit, 1014 North St., flooded and will be closed for at least two months, owner Tamara Haskins confirmed to The News Tribune.

Valley Social, a wine bar that had just opened in October, and Five 12 Apparel are two of several businesses with “limited entry” signs — to staff and authorities only — posted on their doors. On the west side of the destroyed building, Heritage Quest Library, Ashley’s Consignment and Main Street Tattoo also bear these signs. Each is dealing with varying levels of damage, extending beyond what you can see from peering through the windows.

“It’s a weird spiderweb of effect,” said Schober.

EFFECTS OF FIRE DOWN THE BLOCK

Main Street Tattoo will be closed for three to four weeks. The shop sustained smoke damage, which owner Joe Meyer said is “better than the building burning down.” Due to the power outage, the smoke sat in the shop and was not ventilated for some time.

Meyer recalls taking a photo of an entrance rug at his shop that shows the aftermath of the smoke.

“Where the rug was is what the floor should look like and where it wasn’t is a very distinct color of yellowy-brown,” he said.

The ramifications of the fire reached as far east as 1101 Main St., past a pedestrian alleyway to JoJo + CoCo, a boutique clothing store. Owner JoAnna Asplund, who also operates stores in Longview and Richland, said the inventory is simply not sellable. She hopes to replenish enough to partake in Small Business Saturday, the national “shop local” campaign that follows Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

“We were the fortunate ones in this situation,” she said in a phone call Thursday afternoon.

Electric Coffee House, on the ground floor of a separate building constructed in 2019, is also closed because the gas lines remain off. Christina Chatha, who owns the cafe with her sister Pawan Grewal, said they had to throw out food and dairy products when they lost electricity that Friday. It was restored by Sunday, but a week later they had no update on when they would be able to safely reopen.

Businesses on the north side of Main Street told The News Tribune they were not directly affected by smoke, but store hours were limited for a couple of days due to street closures.

At Junkers Nest, one of many eclectic boutiques in downtown Sumner, employee Lauren Nye said the “streets were packed” nonetheless for a Halloween celebration that the city rallied to host the next day in spite of the recent tragedy.

Raimey Iselin, manager of A Picket Fence and daughter of owner LuAnn Iselin, said they felt fortunate to not be dealing with damage, “but it’s been devastating to the town as a whole. There are eight-plus businesses that are out of commission for the foreseeable future. It’s such a big season for all these small businesses, in what typically is a really fun time for this town.”

STUCK JUNCTION, THE ATTIC, WHISPERING HILLS REFLECT ON FIRE

The families with businesses in the razed lot are grappling with the immediate aftermath of losing what felt like a second home.

Schober and her husband bought Stuck Junction Saloon at 1005 Main St. in 2015, a year after it had been remodeled and renamed in honor of Sumner’s original title. Erected in 1911, the building was originally a livery stable. On the walls of the bar were framed photos of its many iterations and proprietors, along with a metal horseshoe, discovered in the basement during renovations.

Schober said last week she did not know if anything was salvageable from the rubble.

“It could have been so much worse,” she said, as she seeks answers and a plan for her 11 employees, who would have been headed into a busy holiday season — the first following two pandemic winters.

Autumn Gildon, who is state Sen. Chris Gildon’s wife, manages The Attic. Her family bought the building in 1991. She recalled the past first-floor bar Sharkey’s Pub, a spot known to longtime locals.

For more than 30 years, The Attic has hosted weddings, birthday parties and other gatherings in the space. It was also where the Gildons had their wedding reception in 1993.

On the day of the fire, Gildon and her husband arrived shortly after her parents. They had received a notification from a fire alarm monitoring company. That moment was “kind of a blur” to her as they had never experienced anything like this before.

They have plans to rebuild, but a timeline has not been established, said Gildon. It all depends on how long it takes to tear down the building, among other things. The Attic is closed indefinitely.

“We’d love to get it back up soon as possible but some things take time,” she said.

December was one of The Attic’s busiest months, especially for corporate parties, coming off a busy summertime wedding season. The venue hosted at least three events every month, according to Gildon, and many were already scheduled for next year; they will move to the family’s other venue, The Hansen Place, a block west.

“I’m just thankful that nobody was hurt,” said Gildon. “It’s definitely a loss to our family.”

At Whispering Hills Market, owners Raejean Kreel and her husband have been in business for about three-and-a-half years. Kreel said the store offered a mix of new and vintage furniture and home decor. The fire has rendered the building “a complete loss,” she said by phone.

They couldn’t salvage anything and lost all of their inventory, including that of their guest vendors. Thankfully, Kreel said, they have a small amount of holiday inventory that was not yet in the shop.

They may not be able to look for a new location until after the holidays, she said. In the meantime, the market will sell items at The Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse at 13608 Cannery Way every weekend from Black Friday through Christmas Eve.

Northwest Java Group, which opened its first Java Junction in Auburn in 1992, had an office in the second-floor front unit for 28 years, said co-owner Robin Baker. She and her brother, Robert Pries, lost records, computers and cash registers in the blaze, but it’s the “sentimental” items — staff photos and framed blueprints of their built-from-scratch coffee shops — that have left an irreplaceable hole.

“My heart goes out to all the businesses,” said Baker, who said their company will need to reconstruct those hard-copy records and find a new office. “It took them a long time to get that fire out. It was scary and sad and emotional.”

‘WHAT IS GOING ON DOWN THERE?’

The fire appears to have been concentrated in the back of The Attic. Crews were still tamping out flames after 8 a.m. that day, The News Tribune reported.

Around 3:30 a.m., Haskins’ phone buzzed: The alarm at The Buttered Biscuit had tripped. Her security company called to notify her that the building had lost power, but they could see movement in the alley.

“What is going on down there?” she recalled, thinking perhaps it was just a storm rolling through. Turning to Facebook, she saw posts about a three-alarm fire in downtown Sumner.

She called her early-morning cook and then her insurance company as she hurried out the door.

When she arrived, the water that had been flooding into the first floor of the two-story restaurant was receding, “but by then the damage had already been done,” she said.

“There was just so much water. It was just like a river coming across the way.”

As water poured over the burning building, it flowed downward, swamping Haskins’ diner for several hours. She estimated about three feet of standing water — until crews realized what was happening.

“They broke into the building and knocked the toilets off their bases in the restrooms, so the water would go down,” she explained.

“The entire downstairs is just a loss,” she said, adding thanks that no one was injured. “It sucks, but the upside is that we do have insurance. We’re in a better position than Stuck Junction — they don’t even have a building.”

The timing, though, could not be worse for Haskins, whose husband and a friend had spent countless hours during slow pandemic days tearing the restaurant “down to the studs.” They had installed new equipment and new walls. Two weeks ago, they revealed the final touch of colorful, contemporary wallpaper.

On Wednesday, the main floor of The Buttered Biscuit was hollowed out, the bottom-third of the walls removed, every piece of furniture removed by Servpro, the hired cleaning and restoration service.

Haskins trusts their insurance will allow them to rebuild. Contractors said it could take two months, but she’s not holding her breath as supply chain challenges continue to plague timelines.

“I’m gonna be ok, but my [20] employees, I’m terribly worried about. We are a successful business. They’re the reason that we are so successful, so I don’t want them going anywhere.”

SUMNER FIRE DONATIONS

Mere hours after the fire had been quelled, the City of Sumner gathered business owners and residents in an emergency town hall meeting to discuss next steps. Sumner Main Street Association quickly created sumnerfire.com to accept donations for those directly affected.

The community response has been inspiring, said Baker at Northwest Java. “It’s been kind of beautiful in that way.”

A local print shop, Group 6ix, called Schober and offered to create sweatshirts with the Stuck Junction logo and the words “gone but not forgotten.” They are for sale online, with proceeds going to employees and “potentially a restoration of the Saloon.”

“The community has been amazing,” she said. “We’ve lived here forever, but that’s my favorite thing about Sumner is that it’s such an amazing place to be. It’s one of those special, unique little towns.”

With her husband and son, Josh, who might have inherited the bar, she is looking ahead to a party-in-planning at The Old Cannnery.

“We were such a small tight-knit group,” said Schober, who owned a Sumner boutique called Feather Your Nest before “the Stuck,” as regulars know the bar. “We have customers that came every day, and our staff was very close. I can’t visualize my life without them.”

She references similar prior tragedies: KC’s Caboose burned in 2005, which was deemed arson by a former cook. JMJ Engineering built its office and Electric Coffee on this lot.

“Long-term, we would love to rebuild,” said Schober. “That would always first be our goal. I have no idea if it’s a realistic goal or not.”

Reporter’s Note: Electric Coffee House has reopened as of Tuesday, Nov. 8.