GLENDALE : Lanterman Organ Decision Expected

After watching it gather dust for five years, city officials are expected today to decide what to do with a forlorn antique pipe organ.

Since offering the Lanterman organ for sale a month ago, the Glendale Redevelopment Agency has received three offers to buy it, two requests that it be donated for local use and another that it be donated to the American Pipe Oregon Museum in Springfield, Ore.

While some city officials want to keep the organ in Glendale, nearly all have maintained that wherever it goes it should be on public display.

To that end, city staff members are recommending that the redevelopment agency either sell the organ to Buena Vista Pictures, which wants to install it at the El Capitan Theater, for $120,000, or give it to Glendale Community College, where it could be housed in the auditorium for music performances.

The proposal to install the organ at the college was made by William Schutz, a pipe organ specialist who has been a consultant to the city since the organ was purchased in 1990. The college has agreed only to house the instrument and cannot pay for installation, but Schutz has told the agency he is confident funds for the project can be raised from local and corporate donors.

“It is of paramount importance that this instrument be kept intact, historically correct and the restoration be of the highest possible quality,” Schutz said.

A citizens committee appointed to figure out what to do with the organ also recommended it be given to the college, if it is decided to keep it in Glendale. The committee said the best buyer for the instrument would be the highest bidder, an Illinois businessman who has offered $130,000 and proposed including it in a planned museum in Northern California.

The city bought the relic, which was originally installed in the Fox Theater in San Francisco in 1929, for $50,000 with the intent of installing it in the Alex Theatre.

But the organ was too large for the theater, and the city and its redevelopment agency have spent about $110,000 to store it since then, officials said.