Bowra & O'Dea open impressive new Mandurah funeral home on Friday

On Friday afternoon, the community gathered to celebrate the opening of the company's new purpose-built funeral home at 460 Pinjarra Road.

Having relocated from their previous address at 2 Leslie Street, dignitaries and community members attended the official opening on Friday.

Mandurah MP David Templeman helped company managing director Joe O'Dea to official open the funeral home.

Bowra & O'Dea manager Garry Russell said planning for the facility started in 2016 and the project was worth the wait.

"What it means for us is commitment to the local area - we are going to be here for a long time," he said.

"Joe and his family said that they really wanted to commit to the local area and if we were going to do that, we need new facilities.

"It seats 130 people with a total capacity of 400. It is significantly larger than our previous premises.

"But not only that, it is architecturally designed to allow a lot more daylight in. It doesn't look like a funeral home and that is probably a good thing."

Mr Russell said the Mandurah community had embraced the business since it opened in 1980.

"We have been made incredibly welcome by the local community and have become part of the fabric - but only because people have welcomed us with open arms," he said.

"We would like to think of our new home as a community centre rather than just a funeral home. We are building a function centre on site and that will give us another arm to it.

"We would like to encourage community groups to use our facilities for thing other than funerals - we are very open to that."