photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

The property at 1220 Timberedge Road in northwest Lawrence, currently occupied by Reuter Organ Company, is pictured Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022.

Reuter Organ Company is planning to scale back operations with the impending sale of its 78,000-square-foot corporate facility in northwest Lawrence, the company’s president and CEO Albert Neutel Jr. announced in a press release Wednesday morning.

The building, at 1220 Timberedge Road, is being sold to Harvesters, a Kansas City-based regional Feeding America food bank that announced its plans to move its Topeka distribution facility to Lawrence in September. According to the release, Harvesters will take possession of the Reuter property at the end of the year.

According to the release, the decision to scale back isn’t just because of the property sale, and the company isn’t planning on moving to a different facility of similar size.

“With many key management and shop personnel anticipating retirement, the logistics and realities of continuing operations on the same scale at a new, more (appropriately) sized facility was determined to be impractical,” the release said.

Negotiations are underway for the sale of certain aspects of Reuter’s production, and an auction is slated for late November to liquidate remaining equipment and inventory.

Neutel will continue Reuter’s business on a limited scope. All of the company’s currently contracted projects will be completed either in the current building or at a smaller local shop. Neutel will also continue maintenance and tuning services, consulting services and work on selected projects.

“We appreciate the support of the innumerable church, university and residential clients we have served over the years,” Neutel said in the release. “We thank you for your patronage and the cordial relationships that have developed in the course of our endeavors. We are proud of the long legacy of Reuter instruments that remain as a testament to our work together, and we are grateful to our devoted employees and representatives that have made this possible.”

Reuter has been operating in Lawrence for more than a century, first out of the Wilder Bros. Shirt Factory building at 612 New Hampshire St. in 1919. Since 2001, the company has been at the location in northwest Lawrence, which was built and designed expressly for building pipe organs.