Plans to Build Near Cemetery Turn to Ashes : Rezoning: Pomona council tentatively clears the way for a developer to sell land on which cremated remains are rumored to have been dumped.

Officials of Lewis Homes of California, eager to lay to rest their connection with a controversial plot of land next to a cemetery, on Monday received tentative City Council approval of a rezoning ordinance needed to sell the property to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The company, which purchased the vacant lot at Towne and Lexington avenues in 1988 for $1.75 million from the Pomona Cemetery Assn., had intended to build a 93-home subdivision on the site.

They dropped that plan after former workers at Pomona Valley Memorial Park, a nearby cemetery, came forward in 1989 with claims that they had often mixed ashes from cremated corpses in a trash can and dumped them on the vacant lot. They claimed that it was common practice to commingle the excess ashes after cemetery urns had been filled.

Although cemetery officials have denied the allegations, the controversy was the kiss of death for the proposed housing tract. As a city staff report on the matter put it: “(Lewis Homes) is . . . concerned that the interment of human remains could have a negative impact on the sale of homes.”

Lewis Homes, which had already started grading the land when the ex-employees dropped their bombshell, filed suit in 1989 in Pomona Superior Court against the cemetery association, a nonprofit organization that operates Pomona Valley Memorial Park.

The company also set out to find someone to take the land off its hands. Enter the archdiocese, which decided to purchase the property as a future expansion site for its Holy Cross Cemetery, located next to the vacant land on Towne Avenue.

The deal is now in escrow, with an undisclosed purchase price. But in order for the transaction to go through, Lewis Homes needs the city to rezone the 17-acre site from residential use to open space. The council gave tentative approval to the change Monday, and is expected to give final approval later this month.

Other aspects of the case, meanwhile, may end up having serious consequences for the Pomona Cemetery Assn.

Before selling the property to Lewis Homes, the association filed a declaration in Pomona Superior Court saying that no interments had taken place on the property. The declaration was used to persuade the court to remove a restriction that limited the property to cemetery use.

An accusation against the association now pending before the state Cemetery Board claims that the court declaration was false and that human remains were commingled “by placing the ashes from various cremations in aluminum cans and burying them at the site.”

An administrative law judge is scheduled to begin hearings on the accusation July 8. The proceedings could lead to suspension or revocation of the cemetery license.

The cemetery association, whose representatives did not return calls seeking comment this week, is also being sued by relatives of people whose ashes may have wound up in the vacant lot.