ZONING FOR COLUMBARIA IN VARIOUS CITIES
This is a comparison of how other cities zone columbaria. More cities will be added as research progresses. None of these cities allows columbaria as a right in a residential zone, as Chicago does.
MILWAUKEE- Milwaukee groups the uses for storage of human remains: Cemetery/ Columbaria/ Mausoleum – and these are NOT ALLOWED in Residential Zones.
LOS ANGELES – has very complex zoning, due to being so large and encompassing areas that are city, suburban, manufacturing, mountain, hill, oceanside, and agricultural, and many more. Los Angeles groups Columbaria with Cremating and Mausoleum. Columbaria/ Cremating/ Mausoleum are allowed in existing, functioning Cemeteries as an adjunct use. Existing cemeteries are not allowed to expand in size. New cemeteries go into LM, Light Manufacturing zones. Cemeteries are allowed in some other zones with Special Use approval if they meet a list of criteria, including they cannot have any building closer than 300 feet to any residential zone or residential use, they must have adequate parking inside for all uses including funeral procession line-up and are not allowed to have any parking or car line-up at all on the streets, must have a border of 10 feet of landscaping and irrigation, must be surrounded by a specific kind of border wall around the entire perimeter, must remove all graffiti the day it is appears, etc. Columbaria/ Cremating/ Mausoleums as a free-standing use outside of a cemetery are allowed in certain zones as a Conditional Use. Conditional Use involves several forms of notice to the surrounding properties and community, a hearing, and written findings of fact that the surrounding properties and community will not be affected.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY: St. Louis names “Cemetery” as a place for burial of the dead, including cremating as an accessory use. In “non-urban areas” there is a permitted use for “ Mausoleums or Crematoriums in an existing cemetery, any other provision of the law notwithstanding, but no such structure shall be situated closer than 100 feet to any cemetery property line.”
ST. LOUIS CITY: City of St. Louis – It appears that all forms of burial of the dead must take place in an existing cemetery. Cemeteries are a “Conditional Use” in residential and other zones, subject to notice, hearing, findings, long list of criteria. Mortuaries are a Commercial use. Case where rezoning occurred to make it legal for a particular mortuary to exist in a residential zone by classifying that lot as commercial was held to be spot zoning and void: Spot zoning ordinance amending general zoning laws by classifying a mortuary as being in a commercial instead of residential district held arbitrary and void. Mueller vs. C Hoffmeister Undertaking and Livery Company, 121 S.W. 2d 775, 343 Mo. 430.
MINNEAPOLIS – Crematories are prohibited, except where accessory to a cemetery, and not within 1,000 feet of the border of any cemetery. Every burial or placing into a vault must be within a public cemetery. No new cemetery or burial place can be established and no existing cemetery can be enlarged without consent of the City Council; the goal appears to be to move cemeteries outside the City. Burials prohibited outside cemeteries. No human body shall be buried at any place except in a public cemetery or placed in a vault outside of a public cemetery without a written permit from the department of health. Several ordinances regarding burials and diseases, concern for public health.
