Longtime Lansdale Funeral Home Could be Converted to Residences

Dan Sokil | The Reporter•

Shelly-Dinan Funeral Home owner Tim Dinan adjusts a portrait hanging on the parlor wall of Elmer Shelly, who founded the company in 1914, ahead of pla

A longtime fixture on Lansdale’s Main Street could soon have a new use.

Council’s code committee heard a preview of a project to convert a century-plus-old business into a residential use.

"We do have a hearing on November 21st, in front of the zoning hearing board, for 24-30 East Main Street — previously known as the Dinan Funeral Home,” said borough Director of Community Development Jason Van Dame.

"There’s an application to convert that to residential units,” he said.

According to MediaNews Group archives, the first block of East Main Street has housed a funeral home since 1914, when Elmer Shelly opened a business known at the time as the Shelly Funeral Home. Shelley operated the business until his death in 1930, when his wife Louise took over and became the first woman to be a licensed funeral director in Philadelphia, then their son Elmer Jr. earned his license in 1940 and ran it until Francis Timothy Dinan added his name when he bought the company in 1977.

The Shelly-Dinan Funeral Home incorporated an addition of an adjacent property in 2012, then celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2014, before Tim passed away in 2021 at age 82 after more than 60 years as a funeral director, according to his obituary.

Borough residents noted the funeral home’s closure on social media in early 2023, and that the family still operates a funeral home on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia. According to the Lansdale Historical Society the property at 30 East Main was once the home and office of longtime area notary, real estate and insurance agent Albert D. Johnson, who was also a onetime tax collector for nearby Upper Gwynedd, a lifelong observer of area weather conditions, and who "waged a ceaseless and successful war on dandelions, cropping them from his lawn with a specifically designed implement intended to get the weed, root and all, as soon as a yellow blossom showed itself on the green expanse,” prior to his death in 1927, according to LHS research.

Montgomery County property records indicate 24 East Main, with a lot size of 5,620 square feet, was sold to a "Peach Tree Real Estate 2 LLC” with an address in North Wales in June, for a listed sale price of $560,000; the adjacent 30 East Main, listed as 11,240 square feet, was sold at the same time to the same owner with no sale price listed. The same county records list the "land use description” for 24 as funeral home, and for 30 as "retail, office, apartments — multiuse.”

"It’s maintaining the existing building: they’re looking to converting the use from a commercial use on the ground floor, to fully residential rental units,” Van Dame said.

"It’s two separate properties. The Dinans joined the buildings a dozen years or so ago, to help their business operate a little smoother, and for some reason they never joined the parcels. We’re maybe going to look at that as part of the zoning hearing, to try to get those parcels combined so they can use it as one single property,” he said.

Resident Carole Farrell asked where the properties are located, and Van Dame said on the south side of Main, east of Broad Street and across from a Citizens Bank, with the intended use being multifamily residential. Councilman Mark Ladley asked if the change in use would affect the parking requirements of any future user of the building, and Van Dame said that’s one of the topics that’ll be discussed at the zoning hearing.

"The parking requirements will be based on the use of the building. That’ll be part of the zoning hearing — I think it’s a project that meets the parking requirements for the number of units they’re proposing,” Van Dame said.

Councilwoman Mary Fuller asked if the funeral home use would continue under any new user, and whether it would be a mixed-use development; Van Dame answered that it would not.

"The commercial use will go away — the funeral home’s been closed for a little while now,” he said.

That hearing will be held at 7 p.m. on Nov. 21, borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on Nov. 15 and the code enforcement committee next meets at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 6, all at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.

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