Funeral Home in Middle of Big Expansion

A big expansion and renovation is underway at Koenig-Belvill Funeral Home in La Grange.

Koenig-Belvill president John Belvill said the business has experienced incredible growth since he purchased the funeral home 19 years ago.

“With the amount of growth we’ve had over the last 19 years, we’ve found that in order to better serve our families, we needed to expand the footprint of this building,” Belvill said.

“We’re now doing over 300 funerals a year,” he added. “Nineteen years ago, we did about 120. It’s changed a lot since I’ve owned the funeral home.”

The fast pace - nearly six funerals a week - spurred their expansion plans. Contractors are currently building a new funeral chapel next to the existing chapel on the west side of the building where the carport stood. Plans also include an expanded lounge area, additional restrooms, new office space and parking improvements.

Koenig-Belvill Funeral Home dates back to 1897.

“It’s one of the oldest funeral homes in South Texas,” Belvill said.

The original two-story funeral home was built on the same site. It featured an apartment upstairs. The old funeral home burned in a fire, and the current funeral home was built about 25 years ago.

“To better serve people, we have to make sure our timing is right with everything,” Belvill said. “When you have two or three funeral directors waiting on families, you’re having to coordinate together to make sure it all works. We’ve never had to put people off, but we’ve had to maneuver around a little bit.

“We do a pretty good job of making sure families get what they want when they want it,” he added. “We always go the extra mile, and that’s why we’re doing this remodel. We want to make sure our families have a beautiful home to bring them to. That’s what this is – it’s their home. The time that they’re here, we want them to use it that way. We want them to be comfortable.”

Belvill is personally overseeing the construction work. Contractors include Jay Garcia for framing, Reeder’s Air Conditioning for electrical and A/C work, Cernoch Plumbing, Colorado Valley Communications for a new telephone system, and Cecil Delgado of Masonry Works in Flatonia for the exterior stone work.

The project almost hit a brick wall, Belvill said, when Delgado discovered the company that manufactured the exterior stone for the building 25 years ago was about to go out of business. Delgado contacted them and was able to procure enough matching stone to finish the expansion.

Belvill said the construction work will take place in phases and will not interrupt day-to-day business.

The project also raises an interesting question: if a funeral home is so busy that it needs to expand, what does that mean for the community? Is the community growing? Or is it getting older?

“It’s a little bit of both,” Belvill said. “If you look in the Round Top area, Warrenton area and Fayetteville area, that area is growing. It’s getting really large. But if you look at our footprint, it takes in about a 125 radius from this funeral home. We have people coming back here from Austin, Houston, Victoria – they’re coming here for their funerals. We’re burying those people here. Their mom and dad were buried here.

“Suppose we get someone from Houston,” he added. “They’ve been gone 30 years and they die. They want us to come there and hold the funeral in their church, and then come back here for burial. We’re doing that. They’re not using funeral homes in Houston. They’re using us. That’s why this funeral home is growing by leaps and bounds.”

Plus, Belvill said the families his company serves appreciate the personal touch Koenig-Belvill provides.

“In the big cities, you’re a number,” he said. “Here, you’re a friend. We want you to come back generation after generation.”