A Santa Maria Cemetery District project to develop a maintenance building and storage area on a vacant parcel nearby has received City Council approval.
After asking a couple of questions at the Nov. 7 meeting, the council voted 4-0 in favor of a General Plan amendment, zone change and planned development permit for a 0.87-acre site in the 600 block of East Newlove Drive.
The district intends to construct a 2,550-square-foot prefabricated storage building with attached 544-square-foot office and break room.
The plan also calls for a 15,900-square-foot gravel base storage area and associated site improvements.
“It’s land-locked and the applicant is proposing that this be a part of the cemetery, but it needs the right General Plan land use and zoning,” community development director Chuen Wu said.
The new facility is west of the cemetery’s already approved expansion area south of Battles Road.
The project has been proposed for a site originally designated for medium-density residential development. The site previously had an un-remediated abandoned oil well head/sump, the city said.
The Cemetery District purchased the site and cleaned up the contamination while working with the Santa Barbara County Department of Environmental Health Site Mitigation Unit.
The land use and zone changes approved for the land-locked property make it consistent with the adjacent land belonging to the cemetery.
The Planning Commission approved the cemetery’s expansion in 2004 with an eye toward serving the community for the next 60 to 100 years.
Since then, the expansion to add more burial sites has been broken into five phases, with the first fully constructed and in use.
The cemetery consists of approximately 35½ acres making up the original section bordered by Stowell and Battles roads plus College Drive and residences.
The newer area, dubbed the South Lawn, encompasses 44½ acres south of the original section, but only five acres remain in use currently.
The South Lawn is bordered by Battles, College, Newlove and strawberry fields.
