Eight months after construction began on King Street in north Kitchener, and with a year or so still to go, one business has had enough.

The Ratz-Bechtel Funeral Home, located on King near Wellington Street, will be moving out at the end of the year.

“With the ongoing construction and the anticipation of another year, year and a half of that … our families will be better served by merging our business with the Westmount Memorial Centre,” managing funeral director Carly Lounsbury told CTV News.

It wasn’t a sudden decision.

The two homes are co-owned, and knew for several years that disruptions were coming.

Last year, Westmount underwent a major expansion to ready itself in case the company decided to close Ratz-Bechtel.

Lounsbury says Ratz-Bechtel did its best to guide its visitors around the construction, even providing directions in newspaper postings and on its website.

Still, she says, they heard regularly from people who had trouble figuring out how to get to and from their business.

“People don’t want to come down into this area, because they don’t know how they’re going to be able to get around,” she said.

Less clear than the fate of the business is the fate of its building.

Before it was a funeral home, it was the homestead of the Kaufman family, who built it in 1897.

Ratz-Bechtel arrived and turned it into a funeral home in 1949.

“It’s a beautiful building. It would be a shame to see it not here,” said Lounsbury.

The building is listed on the city’s heritage registry.

Requirements for redeveloping a building on the registry aren’t as “limiting or stringent” as those for a designated heritage property, Mayor Berry Vrbanovic said, but are stronger than they would be for a property not covered under either protection.

“Any new development applications would have to go through a review process before they would be considered,” he said.

The property is listed for sale, and Lounsbury says she expects it to receive a good deal of interest due to its location along the future light rail transit line.

It’s right next to the King’s Crossing plaza, whose owners – Zehr Group – are planning a major redevelopment.

CEO Don Zehr said Friday that he had no comment about the Ratz-Bechtel property at that time, but hoped to speak to the issue in the future

There are currently 15 people working at Ratz-Bechtel.

Lounsbury said “a couple of” positions would be eliminated as part of the move to Westmount.

The funeral home is owned by Service Corporation International, an American firm which calls itself the largest funeral home provider in North America and also owned the recently closed Schreiter Sandrock funeral home in downtown Kitchener.

The company, which recently warned investors of “operations, economic and currency risks” connected to its Canadian operations, did not respond to a request for comment from CTV Kitchener for this story.