2008 Woodie Awards
Scarcity of Land Leads to Creative Measures
Rochelle Siegel
Issue date: 10/23/06 Section: News
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Growing up with knowing that one day they will not be around, people are comforted with the ideology of being able to be buried in their own plot of land, knowing that their family members can visit their bodies. However with constant population increases of one 1000 people per day, Orlando cemeteries are simply running out of land to bury their citizens. The simplest solution to the shortage of land is to rip up roads and simply make more land. However spiraling land costs have made this solution to expensive and cemeteries are forced to become more creative with the burial land they have.
As Stated by Roger Leggatt, winter park's cemetery chief "this generation is not as into burial". In 2004 50 percent of Florida's Deceased were cremated" and it is predicted to bloom to 58 percent by 2010.
As a result of this statistic cemeteries from one corner of central Florida to the other are reanalyzing their burial grounds, looking for areas to small for a casket but spacious enough for a urn. Cemeteries such as the Orlando's Green Wood Cemetery are "encouraging residents to find a tree on the property and inquire about a space in its shade for the cremated remains".
Also to accommodate their desire for an increase of cremations, cemeteries have increased the number of remains that are allowed to be placed in a standard burial plot. Such cemeteries as winter park went from two to five last year and Longwood allows up six urns to a plot where there is already been a body buried. In addition, Long wood and winter park has budgeted money to add columbarium to there cemeteries. In this columbarium the cremated remains are placed with in their own niche in an aboveground structure. Leggatt says "this is the wave of the future". However, for Orlando's Green Wood cemetery this wave has not reached them.
Don Price, the cemetery sexton of Green Wood cemetery, considered the idea of these columbarium, but found the maintenance against Oak and Spanish moss to costly for the demand for full burial as it stand to be the cities historic cemetery. He states "the older generation, they haven't embraced cremation yet" and estimates that currently about 70 percent of his income are from full burials. In replace of the columbarium the cemetery, for the past 10 years, has found efficiency in double-depth vaults. In this system instead of using a plot of land for one person, the graves still taking the surface area of one lot, can host two or three coffins stacked on top of each other. Still for those land locked city cemeteries "cremation is a blessing".
Till this day the lost of land for cemeteries posses a great crisis to their success. Already cemeteries including Ocoee's city cemetery and one of Lake Wales' two cemeteries are sold out. As well although state laws require a large deposited and a minimum of 30 acres, to make sure that the cemeteries are financially viable and will keep perpetuity, Keenan Knopke, a former president of Florida Cemetery Association, states "the laws make the start up cost prohibited for all but the industry behemoths". As a result of this a new cemetery will take ten years to become profitable and Knope said" for that reason, it has been almost a decade since a new cemetery has opened in central Florida. Finally because of this crisis the city cemetery superintended, Theodore Harper, says "the city probably has another three to four years of sales left in its larger cemetery".
As Stated by Roger Leggatt, winter park's cemetery chief "this generation is not as into burial". In 2004 50 percent of Florida's Deceased were cremated" and it is predicted to bloom to 58 percent by 2010.
As a result of this statistic cemeteries from one corner of central Florida to the other are reanalyzing their burial grounds, looking for areas to small for a casket but spacious enough for a urn. Cemeteries such as the Orlando's Green Wood Cemetery are "encouraging residents to find a tree on the property and inquire about a space in its shade for the cremated remains".
Also to accommodate their desire for an increase of cremations, cemeteries have increased the number of remains that are allowed to be placed in a standard burial plot. Such cemeteries as winter park went from two to five last year and Longwood allows up six urns to a plot where there is already been a body buried. In addition, Long wood and winter park has budgeted money to add columbarium to there cemeteries. In this columbarium the cremated remains are placed with in their own niche in an aboveground structure. Leggatt says "this is the wave of the future". However, for Orlando's Green Wood cemetery this wave has not reached them.
Don Price, the cemetery sexton of Green Wood cemetery, considered the idea of these columbarium, but found the maintenance against Oak and Spanish moss to costly for the demand for full burial as it stand to be the cities historic cemetery. He states "the older generation, they haven't embraced cremation yet" and estimates that currently about 70 percent of his income are from full burials. In replace of the columbarium the cemetery, for the past 10 years, has found efficiency in double-depth vaults. In this system instead of using a plot of land for one person, the graves still taking the surface area of one lot, can host two or three coffins stacked on top of each other. Still for those land locked city cemeteries "cremation is a blessing".
Till this day the lost of land for cemeteries posses a great crisis to their success. Already cemeteries including Ocoee's city cemetery and one of Lake Wales' two cemeteries are sold out. As well although state laws require a large deposited and a minimum of 30 acres, to make sure that the cemeteries are financially viable and will keep perpetuity, Keenan Knopke, a former president of Florida Cemetery Association, states "the laws make the start up cost prohibited for all but the industry behemoths". As a result of this a new cemetery will take ten years to become profitable and Knope said" for that reason, it has been almost a decade since a new cemetery has opened in central Florida. Finally because of this crisis the city cemetery superintended, Theodore Harper, says "the city probably has another three to four years of sales left in its larger cemetery".
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