Community leaders celebrated with staff at Webb & Stephens Funeral Home on Tuesday as the business held a ribbon cutting for its renovated offices on Highway 39. The space was almost entirely rebuilt on the inside.

 

Joe Tew, operations director for Webb & Stephens, said the property has been through several iterations since it was first built in the late 1980s. Webb & Stephens acquired the building approximately six or seven years ago, he said, along with several properties belonging to Stephens Funeral Home.

 

“This location had been shut down for about two years, two to three years. The previous company that owned it, they also owned Stephens that was on North Hill Street,” he said. “We acquired those locations and opened this building back up.”

 

In preparing the building to reopen, some minor roof work and other repairs were needed, but nothing out of the ordinary, Tew said, but after 10 to 11 months working out of the new space, the roof gave way.

 

“When the funeral home was built, our engineer told us, they built it with a 4-foot deep swimming pool on top of it, because it was a flat roof,” he said. “One day, thankfully no families were in the building, that water decided it wanted to be inside the building instead of on top of it.”

 

Repairs to the roof and mitigating the water damage closed the building again for more than a year, Tew said, but the space was finally complete and Webb & Stephens was able to move back in. Although the Highway 39 location, located next to Forest Lawn Memory Gardens, has been back operating for approximately three years, he said, some in the community still don’t know it is open.

 

“They’ll drive by and don’t realize that the business is operating, so that’s one reason why we wanted to do this,” he said.

Matt Schanrock, director of Meridian Main Street, said his organization and its parent, the East Mississippi Business Development Corporation, appreciate the investment that the funeral home has made in Meridian with the ribbon cutting.

 

“We’re just glad that Webb & Stephens decided to do a remodel. That just shows a reinvestment in the community and shows that they’re committed to being here long term,” he said. “And we just appreciate that.”

 

The EMBDC has several additional ribbon cuttings also scheduled this week. Wendy’s on North Hills Street will cut the ribbon in its newly remodeled building Thursday, he said, and the City of Meridian will unveil the new Frank Cochran Center at Highland Park on Friday.