Vail Tries to Bury Plan to Build a Cemetery, but It Just Won’t Die : Colorado: Voters rejected proposal last year, but city seems on verge of doing it anyway. Foes say death violates town’s image.

As the aspens begin turning gold, the focus of political debate in America’s top ski town is what to do with the dead.

There’s a nagging sense that real communities make room for those who lived and worked in them, even after they die. So the town government wants to build a cemetery.

A plan to build one on the sloping hillside of Donovan Park on Vail’s western edge has won the top award of the Colorado chapter of the American Planning Assn. To forestall complaints about the unsightliness of a cemetery, only boulders will be used as tombstones, and they may not exceed 24 inches in height.

Opponents, however, believe that if anything is buried here it should be noisy Interstate 70, which slices through the center of the narrow valley and can be heard throughout town and seen from some ski slopes.

Voters last year rejected funding for a cemetery; a recent survey found that sentiment still prevails.

But the town council is leaning toward authorizing the cemetery, which would take up the park’s 39 acres, without a new vote. The cemetery would provide 980 memorial spaces over the next century--257 inground plots, 122 crypts and 601 niches for urns.

Dr. Tom Steinberg, a councilman and cemetery supporter, says if the council hadn’t pushed ahead years ago, against the expressed wish of the electorate, the town now would be wall-to-wall condos.

Steinberg also sees a cemetery as one way to block the building of more condos.

Ella Knox, a co-founder of the weekly Vail Trail newspaper, doesn’t see it the same way.

“A cemetery in Vail is against what Vail is all about. People come here to have a good time and ski and enjoy the atmosphere. I think a cemetery for Vail is counterproductive,” she said.

“I’m 83 and I know where I’m going to go. I don’t believe in burials. I’m going to be cremated,” said Knox, who lives across the street from the proposed cemetery.

“It’s incredibly visible from the interstate, especially in the wintertime,” said Diana Donovan. Donovan Park is named after her husband, John, in recognition of his effort to preserve open space.

Donovan says cemeteries waste good land in a town so short of it that some residents have proposed putting several miles of Interstate 70 underground to make more land available.

Vail was little more than a crossroads until the 1960s when housing was built in the valley beneath old sheep pastures. Many resort workers have commutes of 30 to 40 miles. About 3,700 people live in Vail year-round. In winter, the population jumps to more than 40,000. The town draws more skiers than any other U.S. resort.

Steinberg, who became Vail’s first resident doctor in 1965, said, “A cemetery is necessary. We don’t have a lot of deaths. But people are dying, and some of them have spent the largest part of their lives here.”

One Vail family, he said, already has buried 10 to 12 family members and two or three of their closest friends on private property within the town.

Councilman Jan Strauch, who owns a travel agency, disputes the notion that the town needs a cemetery to be a real community. “We have crime, fraud, drugs, school problems--everything everyone else has.”

Strauch says those who want to stay in Vail after they die can have their ashes sprinkled on the mountain. He predicts that if a cemetery is built “the rich and famous” will buy up plots, as they have much of the rest of the town.

“It’s not going to solve anything. Do we do it on a first-come, first-serve basis? Do you have to die within the town’s boundaries?”