NATCHEZ — Ward 6 alderman candidate Burnley Cook said Monday he plans to drop out of the race in the upcoming Natchez election.

Cook said he hoped to be further along with his work restoring the Baker Grand Theatre organ by May. He now projects at least a year until completion, and said he didn’t think he would be able to finish it if he were elected.

“On the remote chance I got elected, I would pour all of my energy into trying to serve Ward 6,” he said. “That would definitely push back my restoration, and that’s not something I can do.

“Three years is a long time to work on something, almost to the exclusion of everything else.”

Cook started working on the 1907 Robert Morton organ, an Organ Historical Society historic instrument in 2013, when he received it from a family cleaning a Vidalia storage unit. He hopes to restore the organ and play it in a public venue in Natchez.

“It is one of the few theater organs left in the country,” he said. “I thought it would be neat for Natchez to have it.”

Incumbent Dan Dillard and Agnes Holloway, both Democrats, have qualified to run for the Ward 6 alderman seat. Cook would have run as a Republican.