The Los Gatos Community Foundation and the town held the ceremony, which kicked off bulldozing of the site.

The bandstand will become the venue for community events, including next July's Shakespeare in the Park, and home to the Lyndon cupola, which dates back to 1887. Foundation board Vice President Paul Dubois says he hopes the bandstand will also be a stage for next year's Screen on the Green—the outdoor event of the Los Gatos Film Festival—and the foundation's yearly fundraiser, the Garden Party.

Workers will complete the electrical improvements and the base before winter, and the steel bandstand will be built in the spring.

Though building the bandstand is anticipated to cost $248,000, much of the materials and labor will be donated. Dubois said, "We still don't have 100 percent of the money in there, but we're not worried about the project."

The foundation is expecting several significant donations and plans on doing more fundraising in the next few months. "We're actually in pretty good shape with this thing," Dubois said.

Don Callahan is a foundation board member and one of its founders. Callahan says the foundation planned to wait until the work had begun to concentrate on requesting money, since board members want to have something to show potential supporters.

In 1989, Callahan says, a group of people approached the town council, asking for more funding to construct the bandstand. The cupola had been discovered, abandoned, after John Lyndon's carriage house—which it had sat atop—was demolished.

According to Callahan, the council was unable to fund the project then because the town was recovering from the Loma Prieta earthquake. As a result, the foundation was formed. Callahan says the foundation has participated in raising money for Belgatos Park improvements, the local children's hospital, the Los Gatos Film Festival and the town's Fourth of July event.

As for the bandstand, the foundation never held a full-blown fundraising campaign, Callahan says, but earned small amounts of money gradually by holding the Garden Party and by selling concessions at events. At the same time, the project had to be reviewed by several commissions for town approval.

"The town council really wanted it. They just wanted to make sure that the community was going to be involved," Callahan said. "The town was very cooperative all the way around."

The council gave its approval for the designs and the location—at the northwest corner of Oak Meadow—last year.

What needs to be done now, in addition to actual construction, is the restoration of the cupola. Dubois says the cupola was vandalized and needs to be repaired, and its current pink-and-green color scheme will be replaced with one of reds and yellows.

Using the cupola for community events, Dubois says, is "a piece of Los Gatos history coming to life at last. It's just gorgeous."

"It's a wonderful exhibit of what volunteers can imagine, dream, work hard on, shed blood, sweat and tears on—and it finally came to fruition," Callahan said. "It'll benefit people of all ages."