Harp manufacturer Lyon & Healy is changing its tune about relocating within Chicago.
The company, which dates from a sheet music shop that opened Downtown in 1864, is remaining in its longtime home at 168 N. Ogden Ave. — at least for now. It has dropped plans to move its harp production to a warehouse in Austin, which it acquired in 2021.
The two-story Austin building at 6500 W. Cortland St. is listed for sale. The company plans to remain on Ogden Avenue “until further notice” and may seek other storage space closer to that Near West Side location, Marketing Director Giovany Gomez said.
He said “the harp world is growing” and Lyon & Healy is “bursting at the seams” on Ogden. Lyon & Healy and its corporate affiliate, Italy-based Salvi Harps, account for 90% of the market for the instrument, he said.
Gomez was interviewed Friday before he left for an event at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Through schools and other groups, he said the company has been busy promoting harps for all musical genres, not just classical.
“We’ve done a good job of letting youths know that the harp is an option,” Gomez said.
During the final days of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term in 2023, her administration proposed a tax incentive for Lyon & Healy’s relocation to Austin near the city’s border with the suburbs. The intent was to help one of the oldest Chicago companies stay in city limits. But the Chicago City Council never passed her proposed ordinance into law.
Lyon & Healy withdrew its application for the tax incentive, saying it couldn’t meet the cost of complying with city requirements, said a spokesman for Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development.
Gomez wouldn’t say why there was no follow-through on the incentive. It would have given the Cortland building a reduced tax assessment for 12 years under a Cook County program that encourages reuse of aging industrial buildings.
At the time, the city estimated the company would save more than $656,000 on property taxes over the 12 years.
But the proposed ordinance would have required the company to spend at least $6 million on the Cortland building and meet other conditions, such as minimum spending for minority- or women-owned construction contractors.
Gomez said the company employs more than 100 people, many with advanced skills that have made its harps coveted by musicians worldwide.
“We still make harps like we did 100 years ago,” with intricate carving and gilding and meticulous sourcing of wood, he said.
Many workers prefer to stay on the Near West Side, Gomez said. But with five floors, the property can pose challenges for harp assembly. The company had put it up for sale but withdrew the listing.
The building on Cortland is around 90,000 square feet and listed with no asking price by the brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.
From its roots selling sheet music, Lyon & Healy expanded into retail stores and the manufacture of a broad line of instruments. Besides harps, its offerings included pianos, guitars and mandolins. But a corporate sale in the 1970s to CBS, then with a musical instruments division, led to a concentration on harps.