Taphophilia.(dot) Com - Your next party at a funeral home?

Your next party at a funeral home?

Saturday, 15 July 2006

07/11/2006

Melissa S. Monroe
Express-News Business Writer

San Antonio, TX--The funeral business is getting livelier. Funeral homes are leaving behind their gloomy image and increasingly are turning into convention halls to host events such as weddings, bar mitzvahs and even birthday parties.

In San Antonio, family-owned Mission Park Funeral Chapels & Cemeteries hopes to capitalize on changing demographics and industry trends by building five new funeral homes in the next three years that will focus on "life" events, not just funerals. Mission Park also plans to build three new cemeteries in the city.

Mission Park Chairman and Chief Executive Robert "Dick" Tips said gone are the days when a funeral home can be dark and dismal. Now it's about "celebrating life," he said.

Driven by aging baby boomers who want more cheerful services and greater convenience, funeral home owners nationwide are changing the way they do business.

"Baby boomers are just now starting to die, and boomers have their own ideas and want it done their way," said Arvin Starrett, past board member of the National Funeral Directors Association and owner of Starrett-Rose Funeral Home in the East Texas town of Paris.

Their way includes more customer service and convenience — even a chance to order a Starbucks nonfat latte during a funeral.

Mission Park's new funeral homes will be large event facilities from 20,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet. Mission Park Stone Oak, currently under construction, is the prototype for all the funeral homes — a cutting-edge building equipped to handle small and large funerals, weddings and banquets.

The European style, four-level funeral home will have arch-type hallways, water fountains, video services to view funerals from afar, and concierge services that will offer Starbucks coffee and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies.

"Funeral directors are evolving into becoming event planners, and many (funeral) homes are adding facilities for nontraditional ceremonies," Starrett said.

Mission Park's facilities will be designed to host all types of ceremonies.

Large and small chapels will be located on both sides of the buildings. The facilities will include visitation and casket buying rooms, and crematory chapels in the basement. A conference room will be located just above the crematory chapel.

Tips' $40 million investment will position these projects in the residential growth areas of the city. Mission Park Stone Oak, Mission Park Dominion and Mission Park Westover will all have new funeral homes and cemeteries. Mission Park at Lincoln Heights won't have a cemetery and Mission Park Retama already has a cemetery catering to veterans.

San Antonio is a desirable location for funeral homes because of its appeal to retirees, which is an important factor for building new funeral homes, said Vanderlyn R. Pine, president of New York-based American Funeral Consultants.

Death services today also are handled differently from those of 100 years ago, when the people being mourned were more often infants and children, Pine said.

"If you are arranging a funeral for the elderly, most (services) will be a funeral for memories. So I really believe there will be an increased demand for creative services," he said.

Answering that demand for creativity is where Mission Park comes in. Its 30,000-square-foot funeral home at Stone Oak is costing $300 per square foot and taking the 100-year-old family business to a new level. The restaurant Club Giraud is designing the industrial-style kitchens to handle large catering functions in the funeral homes.

Tips said his new projects are about providing customers a place they can feel comfortable in no matter what the life event is.

"The days of morbidly gloomy funeral homes are rapidly coming to a close," Tips said.

Work on Mission Park Stone Oak is expected to be finished in January, and Mission Park Retama and Mission Park Dominion are due to be complete by early 2008. Plans call for Lincoln Heights and Westover to be done a year later. The cemeteries will range in size from 5 acres at the Stone Oak site to 40 acres at the Dominion location.

Mission Park coordinated 3,000 funerals last year. With the addition of the five funeral homes and three cemeteries, it brings Mission Park's portfolio to 27, including funeral businesses it has in the Houston area.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA071106.1A.mission.park.1618533.html

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