City Council members on Monday will take up an issue last discussed in early spring: the fate of Sonoma’s historic Marcy House.
Built in the 1800s on a property near Clay Street and Broadway, the Marcy House was purchased by its namesake, French immigrant Jules Gustav Marcy, in 1891. In 1989 the little farmhouse was picked up and moved to its current location at 205 First St. W., on city-owned property alongside the police station, where it was occupied by the Sonoma Sister Cities Association under a dollar-a-year lease.
Since then, delegates from any of Sonoma’s six Sister Cities around the world have come to the Marcy House first to meet with local representatives.
Recently the group’s 25-year lease ran out, and the city now has some choices to make. City planners say the old house needs at least $15,000 in upgrades, and that Sister Cities can’t cover the cost; the Sonoma Valley Historical Society, meanwhile, has said it could use the house for its own purposes.
“We have an interest in the Marcy House,” Stephen Marshall, president of the Historical Society, told council members in mid-March, the last time the council took up the issue.
Options before the council at Monday’s regular meeting include approving a lease of the house to the Historical Society, as well as allowing the group “to file a use permit application and, if approved, to sublet a portion of the Marcy House for commercial administrative office purposes.”
Other business before the council Monday includes the possible extension of Sonoma’s garbage contract, as well as “Discussion, consideration, and possible action regarding a request from Mr. Don Bandur to install an exercise rings station along the bike path.”
The meeting starts at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3, in the Community Meeting Room, 177 First St. W.
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