Backers Keep Graveyard Plan Alive : Simi Valley: Council’s preliminary approval comes after a commercial center is dropped from the proposal.

Proponents of a 150-acre cemetery in northeast Simi Valley outfoxed their critics by changing their plan at the last minute and winning conceptual approval from the City Council.

Mt. Sinai Memorial Park representatives said Tuesday that they quickly abandoned plans for a commercial center next to the proposed cemetery after hearing neighborhood activists criticize a nearby Shell gas station project at a council meeting last month.

The same activists attended Monday night’s meeting and charged that Mt. Sinai’s business development would also be unsightly and create traffic problems.

But when Mt. Sinai promised that there would be new homes--not a bustling commercial center--next to the cemetery, the council unanimously approved the idea.

“They watched the Shell hearing,” Mayor Greg Stratton said Tuesday. “I think they read the council members very well and knew it wasn’t going to fly” with a commercial center attached.

As the project undergoes more detailed planning, Mt. Sinai has agreed to meet with Citizens for a Safe and Scenic Simi Valley, the group that successfully opposed the Shell station and earlier fought a plan for a nearby McDonald’s restaurant.

Arnold Saltzman, general manager of Mt. Sinai’s Hollywood Hills cemetery, said Tuesday that he was not interested in a showdown with the activists.

“As a not-for-profit and religious organization, achieving a good-neighbor relationship is critical,” he said.

Eileen Gordon, a board member of Citizens for a Safe and Scenic Simi Valley, said her group was pleased that the commercial center has been discarded. She said her organization wants to help Mt. Sinai refine its new development plan.

“This will be the first chance our group will have to be involved with a developer who is actually open to suggestions,” Gordon said. “McDonald’s said they would meet with us, and Shell said they would be willing to meet with us. But they said they were unwilling to change the things we were concerned about.

“So there was no sense in meeting with them.”

Before the cemetery can be built, more detailed plans for the cemetery and adjacent housing development must be approved by the city’s Planning Commission and the council. Because its present cemetery is running out of room, Mt. Sinai is considering the purchase of a 381-acre site in the hills north of the Simi Valley Freeway between Yosemite Avenue and Kuehner Drive. Most of the land is zoned for housing.

To help pay for the new Jewish cemetery, Mt. Sinai initially proposed a General Plan change that would have allowed it to sell 43.5 acres near Yosemite Avenue to a commercial developer. The land is just east of the McDonald’s and Shell sites.

The proposal triggered strong opposition from the neighborhood activists. City planning staff members also urged the council to reject it, saying the project would violate Simi Valley’s development rules.

After the Shell project failed, Mt. Sinai revised its proposal, said Elaine Freeman, the memorial park’s planning consultant.

“We felt that in light of the neighborhood’s feelings, and wanting to be a good neighbor, we would recommend the change from commercial to residential” development near Yosemite Avenue, she said.

Although commercial land is more valuable, Freeman said Mt. Sinai believes that the project will still work out financially if the land next to the cemetery is sold to home builders.

City Council members said they were prepared to vote down the project if it included the commercial center. But they agreed to let it move forward if it is limited to a cemetery, parkland and fewer than 700 houses.

Planning and environmental reviews will probably take a year, and construction of the cemetery may be two years away, Freeman estimated.