In a split vote, Hollidaysburg Borough Council Thursday ordered a compromise to settle the controversy over Mayor Chad Repko’s proposal to turn the Reiser House at Canal Basin Park into a museum for the Slinky toy — a proposal that generated opposition last month from advocates for the canal-era exhibits currently in the structure.

Under the compromise, exhibits on the first floor — the second is occupied by a tenant — will be split 50-50 between items representing the canal basin, all of which would remain on display, and items representing the Slinky, which has been manufactured in the borough for decades and whose inventor’s family would provide the materials.

But there is a twist that, for a time, threatened to capsize the compromise: the canal basin advocates’ recent pursuit of the possibility that the National Park Service, which operates the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site near Gallitzin, could take over the Reiser House and Canal Basin Park as a satellite operation, given that both sites memorialize elements of the same transportation system.

If such a takeover should happen, the Slinky exhibits might be forced out, as a takeover of that sort could be highly beneficial to the borough, according to the council’s order on Thursday.

It’s hard to say how likely that is to occur, but if it does, council would deal with it at the time, said Councilman Brady Leahey, who chaired the meeting in the absence of council President Sean Burke.

The order also called for the Slinky exhibits to potentially rotate with those of other major Hollidaysburg companies, like McLanahan’s, officials said.

The vote to accept the compromise was 4-2, with Leahey, Jeff Ketner, Clay Gingrich and Walter Kalista in favor and Bill Kitt and David Jacobs opposed.

Kitt explained his opposition based on his receiving a petition against the Slinky proposal from Joel Kloss containing the names of more than 200 borough residents.

No disrespect to the James family, which developed the Slinky, but that sort of opposition from constituents is telling, Kitt said.

Repko advocated for the Slinky exhibits exclusively as something that could help the borough “attract and retain people” and businesses in its unending competition with other locales.

A Slinky museum is a worthy goal because the toy is an “iconic” piece of Americana; 400 million of them have been sold; it’s in the National Toy Hall of Fame; and its image has been on a U.S. Postal Service stamp, Repko said previously.

The core of the exhibits would come from a trove of memorabilia — including many newspaper articles — dating from the 1940s that borough resident Rebecca James Morris discovered in her mother’s garage after her mother died in 2008, Morris told council and a roomful of attendees.

Her father invented the toy and her mother ran the company that made it, after her father left to go to Bolivia in 1960, Morris said.

“I felt it was important as a family to explain how it (the famous toy) came about,” she said.

Adding Slinky exhibits to the existing Canal Basin exhibits would actually increase traffic and thus exposure of the community to the Canal Basin exhibits, some council members said.

There’s also the eventual possibility that the second floor of the Reiser House could be used for exhibits, Kalista said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.