Cemetery Officials Fear Surrounding Projects Will Threaten Solitude

As cemetery operator Jim Price looks at a grassy, oak-covered knoll overlooking the Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, he sees change.

The 60-foot knoll belongs to a developer who gained final approval earlier this month for Westlake North, a large commercial and residential project bordering the cemetery on three sides.

The knoll, planned for at least partial grading, is one of several aspects of Westlake North that has Price worried about how construction noise and changed landscapes will affect the cemetery, mourners and funeral services.

Moreover, the 39-acre cemetery’s position in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped Westlake North site poses the question of how a large development can peacefully coexist beside a cemetery. The developer says landscape screening, block walls and iron fences will do the trick; Price is not convinced.

“A cemetery is a very unique piece of property,” said Price, vice president of Pierce Bros., which owns Valley Oaks. “It’s not a house. It’s not an industrial park. There are some unique questions that need to be asked.”

Over the objections of the cemetery operators, the project was approved by the Westlake Village City Council earlier this month. Price said the cemetery firm plans to keep a close eye on Westlake North as the council reviews it as it is built in the coming months and years.

“Our plans at this point are to watch very carefully the approval process” and “express our concerns to city officials,” Price said.

“It’s a very sensitive issue with a development of this size surrounding a cemetery,” said Charles H. Fry, a representative of Westlake Village Associates, the builder of Westlake North. “We want to be good neighbors to them and respond to the privacy of people who have family members there.”

Westlake Village Associates, a firm run by Daniel K. Ludwig, plans to build 250 condominiums and 1.4-million square feet of commercial space, including four-story buildings, on the vacant land north of the Ventura Freeway and east of Lindero Canyon Road. It would be built over 10 to 15 years.

Price acknowledged that the project site around the cemetery was zoned for a mixed-use project when Pierce Bros. bought the cemetery in 1978. But he said his main worry is construction noise, especially from the grading of the knoll. He had objected to the developer’s earlier proposal for six-story buildings just south of the cemetery, and now that the heights are to be four stories, he said, “We’d rather see two.”

The noise, Price said, “will impede our ability to conduct dignified and appropriate memorial services. . . . Our concerns are mainly the privacy of the families that are visiting the park.”

Westlake North plans to landscape and add walls and fence-screening to shield the cemetery and its visitors from noise and other effects of construction.

“We’ll do everything that we can to minimize the construction impact,” Fry said, noting that cemeteries in urban areas are not uncommon. “I don’t anticipate that the impacts are going to be substantial.”

But Price is skeptical of whether the screening measures would work. He said the plan was vague about the timing of the measures and complained that the cemetery was not consulted by the company that prepared Westlake North’s environmental impact report.

“There’s absolutely no way you’re going to be able to screen and protect this memorial park,” Price said, as he delivered an unsuccessful plea last month to the Westlake Village City Council for a delay in the project.

The cemetery’s engineer, Robert Levonian, told the council: “You’re taking this beautiful, quiet and peaceful park and putting it in the middle of downtown Burbank.”

The council approved the project after Westlake Village Planning Director Robert Theobald told council members the screening and buffering could be required before grading would begin in areas of the project next to the cemetery.

Price’s company already operates a cemetery in Westwood Village. “It’s certainly unfortunate that we have high-rise buildings and that type of development around it, so we are more determined to see that Westlake Village does not turn into that type of city,” Price said.

The reason Westlake North nearly surrounds the Valley Oaks cemetery is that at one time, the cemetery and the project site were the same piece of property, owned by Ludwig, the Westlake North developer. Ludwig originally envisioned the entire piece of land as a 181-acre graveyard, but in the 1970s he scaled the cemetery down to its current size, sold it and kept the remainder for development.

Concerns about development near the cemetery have been raised before. In 1979, businesswoman Patricia Kanan and her late sister Judy prevailed in a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit over Ludwig’s shrinking of the cemetery. The Kanans, who had bought a family plot in 1968, said Ludwig’s plans could bring “urban blight” to the cemetery, and they won a $1.5-million judgment against Ludwig’s company.