The business is unable to do that with its current building, a 10,000-square-foot structure constructed in 1965 and one that does not lend itself to adaptive reuse.
Instead, it will construct a 11,510-square-foot new building on the 3.4-acre property, one that will have more amenities, including ADA accessibilities, plus private driveways, 133 parking spaces and service-and-delivery areas.
“It’s far more modern and much more conducive to the desires of today’s funeral consumer with bigger open spaces and celebrations of life, hospitality and considerably more parking than we have here now as well,” said Brad Palmer, market director for Service Corporation International, or SCI, which owns the funeral home.
Founded in 1962, Houston, Texas-based SCI owns and operates more than 1,900 funeral homes and cemeteries in 44 states, eight Canadian provinces, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
LaMar and Norma Tobias founded Tobias Funeral Home in 1941. They eventually sold it to Keystone America, which was acquired by SCI in 2010.
A complete teardown of the main structure is expected to start this month with the accessory building remaining, Palmer said. Construction of the new facility should take about a year, he said.
Tobias Funeral Home will participate in improvements to the intersection of Far Hills and Rahn in conjunction with the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Washington Twp. Public Works Department.
During construction of the new facility, the funeral home will be hosting services in other locations with which it has made agreements, Palmer said.
“The other building’s coming down completely,” he said. “It’s a whole new site development.”
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