EDMONDS – Come next year there will be a new opportunity for owning space in Edmonds.
There won’t be much of a view, but $1,200 and it’s yours.
Work is slated to begin before the end of the year at the Edmonds Memorial Cemetery on a new columbarium – a structure in which small spaces are used for storing and memorializing cremated remains.
The structure will be located in the northeast corner of the cemetery where it borders Ninth Avenue N. and 15th Avenue SW. Construction is expected to take three months.
The city, which owns and operates the cemetery, is spending $300,000 on the initial phase of the project. The columbarium was approved by the City Council as part of a five-year plan for the cemetery, said cemetery sexton Cliff Edwards. Public hearings were held with the Edmonds Cemetery Board and the Architectural Design Board, which gave its approval to the project earlier this month.
The first phase includes three curvilinear walls into which the niche spaces will be built, with two step-up plazas located between the walls. Ramps will make the plazas wheelchair accessible. A waterfall will be built into the stairsteps between the two plazas.
This phase includes space for 400 niches. The columbarium will be built in such a way as to allow the walls to be extended to add more niches, and rock memorials built into the landscaping and others on the lawn below are possibilities, Edwards said. In all as many as 800 niche spaces could be included.
The ultimate buildout would add another $540,000 to the project, an amount the city currently doesn’t have, Edwards said.
But if sales go well, as city officials expect them to, the city will more than make up its construction costs in the long run.
“We’re very enthusiastic about it because this is what our clients are asking for, is niche space,” said Esther Sellers, a member of the Edmonds Cemetery Board, a volunteer panel that sets cemetery policy.
About 60 percent of all burials now are done via cremation, Edwards said. A small columbarium with 48 spaces was built on the grounds in 1985 and filled up five years ago, he said. The only other columbarium space available is a large vault into which ashes are dumped communally and the names listed on a tablet nearby, Edwards said – the bargain basement of the cemetery industry.
The area planned for the new columbarium is a hillside that can’t be used for burials, Edwards said – “it’s just wasted land up in that corner.” The corner, in fact, had been city street right-of-way based on how the road there curved many years ago, according to Edwards. The cemetery was able to obtain a street vacation from the City Council as a formality, he said.
The columbarium should improve the look of that part of the cemetery, Edwards said.
“We are really impressed with the appearance of it,” Sellers said.
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