One of Chaska's oldest houses will soon begin a short but important journey that will carry it to a site in the city's historic district.
The City Council last week approved spending $242,000 to move the Riedele House — built in 1884 adjacent to the owner's brickyard business — from 3250 Chaska Blvd. to the Walnut Street Historic District. The cost is more than the $150,000 the city initially expected to spend but about 25 percent less than a bid of $318,000 it received last fall.
The new winning bid was submitted by Thein Moving Co. Inc., which city staff said has extensive experience in moving houses, including ones with historic value.
"We do have a better result," Assistant City Administrator Jeffrey Dahl told the council. He said city planners may not have understood the complexity of relocating the house when they first estimated the project's cost and were surprised when the initial bid came in high.
Besides rebidding the relocation job, the city also looked at alternatives for the cream-colored brick house, including keeping it at its current location or tearing it down.
Keeping the house on the existing site in Firemen's Park would have required revisions in the park redevelopment project that's now underway. Changing the park plan would have cost $50,000, and building something else to fill the spot reserved for the Riedele House on Walnut Street would have cost another $60,000.
Demolishing the house and building something else on Walnut Street would have cost $85,000. That option also would have been at odds with expectations of the city's Historical Preservation Commission, the Chaska Historical Society and Minnesota's Historic Preservation Office.
An easier-to-back plan
The house is named for Andreas Riedele, a German immigrant who came to Minnesota in 1855 and went into the brickmaking business in Chaska in 1881. He built the house in 1884. It was occupied by two generations of his family and eventually passed to different owners when they acquired Riedele's brick business.
