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Opposition Continues As Cemetery Expansion Clears Hurdle |
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December 24, 2002 Background: Christopher A. Joseph & Associates prepared an IS/MND for the Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery. Los Angeles Independent News December 24, 2002 By: Mario Villegas ?Amid the lingering animosity that some area residents still have toward Service Corporation International representatives, the Westwood Village Design Review Board last week approved the Houston-based company's design plans for two new mausoleums at Westwood Village Memorial Park. The company intends to build an 18-foot-high mausoleum that will hold 463 bodies and a smaller family mausoleum at the 2.9-acre site on Glendon Avenue, known as the cemetery to the stars because it holds the remains of Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood and Walter Matthau, among other movie stars. It is also the resting place of Spanish American and Civil War soldiers. Over the summer, the cemetery owners got the OK to expand in a hotly contested process that draw media coverage from around the world. However, in October, the City Council voted to include the 105-year-old cemetery among the city's historic-cultural monuments. It's been a long process filled with opposition from neighboring homeowners who had fought to prevent the proposed expansion to the historic site, a fight that also included family members who have loved ones buried there. The design review board voted to approve the plans, while imposing some conditions. Among those were addressing the neighbors' concerns about preserving some of the specimen trees. Another was that the proposed 8-foot wall on the property line be built along with the mausoleums and that the wall connect with existing side walls of one homeowner's side walls. One of the issues raised by the homeowners was why "Building A," the larger of the two mausoleums, can't be built to face the existing mausoleums, rather than face the houses that abut the cemetery. SCI had planned originally to build two mausoleums that mirrored each other, but it changed the plan. There was also discussion among the homeowners that in some cases they had only days to review the design plans and requested that the board hold off on its ruling until it met again on Jan. 15. The design plans were submitted to the city on Oct. 25, but some of the homeowners said they didn't receive the plans until Dec. 13 and another received it the day before the meeting. "We need more time to decide what kind of wall we can live with," homeowner Lili Young added. "It needs a finishing thing on top. They need to get on the same page as their neighbors."? (Excerpt copyright 2002 Los Angeles Independent News) Link: http:// www.laindependent.com |
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