Allen County Planning Commission members gave their blessing Thursday to Reuben Feuerborn to convert a house next to Feuerborn Funeral Home into a monument showroom and office. Commission members voted 5-0 to reclassify the property along U.S. 54 between Iola and Gas for commercial use from its existing residential zone.
Feuerborn is keeping the name Williams Monuments for the gravestone business.
Final decision goes to Allen County Commissioners.
Feuerborn opened the funeral chapel’s new location about five years ago in what had been the Community of Christ Church.
At about the same time, he purchased Williams Monuments from the estate of Terry Ellis, and has operated those services out of the funeral chapel.
Feuerborn said he plans to do some modifications to the house, such as removing a garage door, perhaps a window or two and revamping the front facade.
Williams also plans to display a small collection of gravestones on the property, which piqued the interest of Planning Commission members.
At issue was a letter they had received from Darrell Ellis, who lives along the highway just east of the Feuerborn property.
“I do not care to have a yard full of tombstones within 200 to 300 feet of the west side of my property,” Darrell Ellis wrote. “I don’t want to see a yard full of tombstones every time I go by.”
Feuerborn assured Planning Commission members he wouldn’t place a large number of stones on the property. At most, he’ll have six to eight examples.
“That’s not the way we do business,” Feuerborn said, pointing out that when Williams Monuments was open in the 100 block of West Broadway Street in Iola, it had a large number of stones on display out front because Terry Ellis did much of the production on site.
“You’d go there and choose from what he had on hand,” Feuerborn said. “Today, the overwhelming majority of what we sell is custom-produced.”
Feuerborn has a gravestone production facility at his funeral home in Garnett.
The Planning Commission also received a letter in support of Feuerborn’s request from Iolan Marsha Burris, whose father, the late Richard Burris, designed the East Lawn Addition, on which the funeral home property sits.
Burris noted her father was strongly in support of Feuerborn relocating to the old church five years ago.
“Feuerborn Family Funeral Home has been a very classy improvement to East Lawn Addition,” Burris wrote.
