The building will be sold. The business will continue at the Falardeau Funeral Home in Baldwinsville
By Stefan Yablonski
Allanson Glanville Tappan Funeral Home, founded more than 100 years ago in Phoenix is changing ownership.
The family-owned business is run by Doug Tappan, the third generation owner.
He said he has entered into a cash asset buyout arrangement with Albert Clos, owner of the Falardeau Funeral Home in Baldwinsville.
“I had a woman who was going to take over, a licensed lady. However she said she was going to take a job in Binghamton,” Tappan said.
“I haven’t had anything really substantial,” he added. “We are doing all cremations for the most part and most of the time we haven’t used the funeral home. When you start losing your charges for use of the home — upkeep and utilities — you’re working for nothing.”
He said he had two people who had inquired about the business, but it was years ago. When he checked up on them, “they were not in that mode again.”
A little history
Because he had some family history with the Falardeau Funeral Home in Baldwinsville, he and Clos made a deal.
“The Falardeau family… Mary, works with us part-time, her grandfather originally was business partners with Doug’s grandfather,” said Clos.
“We want to give continuity to the families that have pre-planned services,” he explained. “Doug has a large number of families that have prearranged services there and rather than just letting the name die out we came to this idea to let things continue.
“It’s just the name and the contact information stuff like that will be transferred over. The business will continue to run as Allanson-Glanville-Tappan Funeral Home. It will be run out of our location in Baldwinsville. It will be two separate businesses under one roof.”
“We do 50 or 60 death calls a year, but if you start reducing everything to a direct cremation and I’ve had some they didn’t even want an obituary on the website — there just isn’t enough revenue to really do anything,” Tappan said. “So it becomes worth less than maybe it did 15 years ago.
“I just figured I guess it was time. I’m turning 72 at the end of March and I’m going to be a grandpa now. I’m excited about that.
I’m healthy — if I didn’t do it now – who knows, you know?”
“I got my funeral director’s license at age 20,” Clos said. “I worked in providing support services to other funeral homes for a number of years until the opportunity to purchase in Baldwinsville came up. I bought this about four and a half years ago.”
Clos said he and Tappan “signed an agreement the other day to kind of get things moving with the state. So I guess it just depends on how long it takes the state to process paperwork. Probably in a couple weeks or so.”
Tappan said the funeral home building at 431 Main St. will be sold separately.
“I’ll sell the building. It’s two separate entities. The house was one and the business was the other — the funeral home is downstairs,” Tappan said. “There won’t be anything in the village here. But, like I say, we don’t use the building much anymore. It’s going to several months to clean things out and finish up what we have to do — equipment and merchandise that sort of thing, inventory it and hopefully sell it.”
