Stonacek Funeral Chapel to build in Randolph location

RANDOLPH — Randolph likely will see another funeral home business dig itself a spot in the community by the end of the year.

Todd Stonacek, one of the owners of Stonacek Funeral Chapel in Norfolk, attended the Randolph City Council’s regular meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 5, and made an offer of $75,000 for the Cedar Motel property located at 107 E. Highway 20.

The council, convening as the Community Development Agency, heard from Stonacek that his family business plans to have the motel structure demolished and a new funeral home built on the site.

The CDA ultimately authorized Randolph City Administrator/Clerk Ben Benton to negotiate with the Stonacek family over the final purchase price for the property, plus what he called “associated costs” for the city, such as utilities.

“There have been associated costs to get the site ready to demolish,” Benton said in a follow-up interview. “He offered to cover some of those expenses.”

He noted a resolution is required for the city to officially approve and sell the motel property and that will be prepared for the Feb. 2 council meeting. A waiver was signed later in the week by city officials to allow for the demolition of the motel structure, which began on Jan. 10.

Stonacek noted in a follow-up interview he and his partners have discussed adding a Randolph site for years and the motel property offers an ideal spot.

“We’ve talked about it for a long time,” he said. “When that location came up, we thought it’d give us good visibility right on the highway there.”

Stonacek owns his family’s funeral home business along with his father, Bill, and sons Brock, Bronson and Blake. In addition to the Norfolk location, the Stonacek family has memorial chapels in Osmond and Pierce.

“We’ve always had business over in Randolph,” Todd Stonacek said, noting many families from in and around the community use their Osmond location.

The new Randolph site means the Stonacek family will have a physical location in the community to compete with the other funeral home business in town.

Home for Funerals in Norfolk took over ownership of Johnson Funeral Home in Randolph and Shultz-Vogel-Johnson Mortuary in Stanton in October from Brad and Terri Johnson.

For the Stonacek family, the plan is for the new Randolph funeral home to share the same name as the Osmond and Pierce sites – Stonacek Memorial Chapel – and to have plenty of parking spaces.

The new building will have a space for visitations and funerals, as well as a climate-controlled area for the Amish wooden caskets the Stonacek family distributes to other funeral homes.

Stonacek said Larry Janssen’s Janssen Construction of Randolph will handle the demolition of the motel structure. Roger Koehler Construction of Pierce will be in charge of building the new Randolph funeral home.

“It’ll hopefully be done this year,” Stonacek said.

Benton said Stonacek’s $75,000 offer matched what the city had previously paid for the motel property. The city bought the land and structure on Sept. 27 from the John and Myra Heegle family, who had been longtime owners of the motel site.

“Once we purchased it, we realized the status inside was pretty dilapidated,” Benton said before the Jan. 5 council meeting. He noted the 20-room motel building had some long-term customers paying month-to-month before the city purchased the property.

The people who had been staying at the motel were given a 30-day notice by the city to vacate the 8,800-squarefoot structure.

“We had everyone vacate by Halloween,” Benton said.

He and other city employees worked on cleaning up the motel structure – which he said dates back to the early 1960s – during November.

“It took us about a month to get all the trash out,” Benton said. “We were in there three to four days a week for four weeks. It was just in such poor shape.”

The elimination of trash and asbestos – the latter of which was removed from the motel building during the first two weeks of December – is part of the “associated costs” he previously mentioned.

“The costs add up, but we’ve been smart about doing it,” Benton said. “We’ve been doing our best to keep costs low.”