We have zoning laws here. They are enforced by a County Planning Commission. Who, if you pay them enough are more than happy to bend those laws to meet your needs. Let me give you this example. I live roughly 10 miles from a major shopping mall, Gwinnett Place Mall. Surrounding it are all the strip malls, fast food, ect you would expect to find near a mall. With the exception of a large cemetery located at right next to I-85. the other sides are bordered by a 6 lane road, a 4 lane road and a office park. On the other side of the smaller road was a large church. It was torn down so a restraunt could be built on the location. Developers are going nuts trying to get that land to build on. So far, it's been saved. But the way things are around here, it's only a matter of time. One of the things built on land near the mall that contained a small cemetery was a 16 screen theater. It just closed last year. So several years ago, the company that owns the first mall decided that the best spot in all of Atlanta to build a huge new mall, largest in the southeast was 8 miles down the expressway. On a very nice piece of land that contained several small cemeteries. The mall was built, and along came all the same strip malls, etc that were around the mall 8 miles down the road. Then someone came up with the bright idea of placing a large mall on the same expressway, right between the two. Never mind the small Church and cemetery that were located on part of that property. Want to guess what's being built around that new mall? The exact same strip malls, etc. In a radius of 12 miles there are 3 Wal Marts, 5 Targets, 15 Kroger's, 13 Publix Grocery stores, 8 Home Depots, and 3 Lowes. That I am aware of, there were no less than 12 cemeteries lost to this "needed" development. William Spurlock Saving Graves http://www.savinggraves.com -----Original Message----- From: rvkeller@iupui.edu [mailto:rvkeller@iupui.edu] Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 3:15 PM To: INPCRP-L@rootsweb.com Subject: RE: [INPCRP] Cemetery Laws On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, William Spurlock wrote: > I think that it's not a matter of people not caring, but something much > more. Sue was right, it's a serious lack of respect. Here where I am in the > east suburbs of Atlanta, we have developers clearing every bit of land that > they can find. They don't care what may be there, gotta build on it. We > really need that Target three miles down the road from the next one. We > really need three grocery stores at every intersection. We really need the > new 1200 unit apartment complex that is being built at a time when people > are moving out of Atlanta and there are more vacant apartments that there > has been in the past 10 years. That land needs to be developed. Gotta make > that money. What's funny is that if the demand wasn't there, it wouldn't be built. Lucky for us, Target took a bankrupt department stores place in the mall. The mall was one of the worse ones in town. Now that Target is there, many name brand stores are coming in and it's turning around. I think there is a total lack of brain power when it comes to this sort of thing. A professor of mine had a group of grad students who went to this county just west of Indianapolis. This was about 8-10 years ago I believe. The county board was having trouble keep plants and industrial parks away from homes. The reason: They didn't have ANY zoning laws at all. When the board had these grad students come up with an idea, they said 'you need a zoning board'. The farming community went crazy. I see both sides, one you have a farmer with some debt, may need to sell off some land. One the other hand you have people who buy a house thinking in 5 years it will be all homes. Then comes some industrial park. The main battle we face is that of _private_ property. Also, we can also blame the population in general. There has been a rush to cities and their surrounding counties. Rural suburbs are now both suburban and rural. Head 10 miles in a certain direction, your in a corn fields.