Council OKs Plans for Jewish Cemetery
Plans for a Jewish cemetery on 381 acres of land adjacent to the Simi Valley Freeway have won unanimous approval from the Simi Valley City Council.
The council voted 5 to 0 Thursday night to grant zoning variances that will allow construction of Mt. Sinai Memorial Park along the freeway’s northern edge between Yosemite Avenue and Kuehner Drive.
Because some of the cemetery will lie on hillsides steeper than the 20% allowed by the city’s hillside ordinance, developer Robert Levonian had to obtain special permission from the city to build.
Plans include a 25,600-square-foot building housing a chapel, offices and archives. The dead would be buried either in crypts or graves marked with flat stones rather than upright headstones. A 6-foot-high wall will be built to shield the cemetery from freeway traffic.
The planners expect to fill the cemetery at the rate of about one-half to one acre each year, said Assistant City Manager Donald Penman.
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