After two months of assessing, the City of Long Beach agreed to take over the 113-year-old Sunnyside Cemetery with a unanimous 7-0 approval vote during the city council’s Aug. 20 meeting.
The 13-acre cemetery at 1095 E. Willow Street opened in 1906 and has over 16,000 interred, including pioneering city officials, Civil War soldiers and Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
“This is one of the most historic sites in the city,” Economic Development Manager John Keisler said during the meeting. “Over the past few years, as the cemetery filled up, the space to sell new burial plots decreased. That put a lot of pressure on the cemetery to operate and continue to maintain its aging infrastructure.”
Keisler told the council that the cemetery’s board approached the city in June saying that it could no longer operate and maintain the site and would close it at the end of August. The board was willing to transfer its title to the city, changing the cemetery from a private to public site, and also transfer the $540,000 remaining in its endowment fund.
Keisler said the city’s Parks, Recreation and Marine (PRM) Department– which already maintains and operates the adjacent four-acre Municipal Cemetery with a budget of $60,000– estimates that maintaining and staffing the Sunnyside property will cost an additional $230,000 annually, which is currently not budgeted.
The staff report indicates that the city will need to invest a further $1 million to $1.5 million in making capital improvements to the site and that its contractual obligations include allowing private burials to continue for individuals with deeds on file, a historical cemetery tour in October and a Long Beach Opera event in May 2020.
Just before the meeting Tuesday, Keisler told the Signal Tribune that historic assets like the Sunnyside Cemetery generally struggle financially and come with risks.
“When these privately-held cemeteries run out of space and can no longer sell plots, they oftentimes will either file for bankruptcy or even walk away and then they default to the local jurisdiction,” he said.
He added that the city still needs to assess potential issues with the site’s soil stability and building infrastructure.
“This is essentially a land-grant– it’s the transfer of a piece of property that comes with responsibility and potential liability as well,” he said. “We want to be ‘eyes wide open’ but also we want to protect our unique history.”
Keisler said the city will seek supportive partners, grants and sponsorship opportunities from nonprofit groups, government organization and even private interests. It is also considering a cemetery tax-assessment to help pay for the site’s maintenance, but that idea is very preliminary, he said.
The city may reposition the site for more public access, tourism, filming and use in special events, he added.
“I’m just grateful that the Sunnyside board […] has worked very hard over many, many years to keep the history of this important part of our city alive and well,” Keisler said.
During the meeting, councilmembers expressed support for keeping the cemetery as a historic asset. Mayor Robert Garcia also noted residents’ emotional connections to it.
“Many of our founding fathers and mothers of the city are buried there,” Garcia said. “Beyond that, there are many residents and families who currently have members of their family buried at that site.”
He expressed appreciation that the city will incorporate the cemetery into its parks system after receiving appeals from the cemetery’s board for the city to take over.
“We’ve been talking about this for a couple years, about how we do this the right way while being respectful to those that are doing the work currently, so it has been a back-and-forth,” he said. “But we said from day one we would not let the cemetery close or fall into major disrepair.”
Councilmember Roberto Uranga said that all five of Long Beach’s cemeteries are located in the 7th District, which he represents.
“People are dying to get into the 7th,” he quipped.
He also thanked residents for bringing this issue forward to his and the council’s attention.
“It was a wakeup call to us,” he said. “We need to save our heritage and we need to save the cemetery.”
Vice Mayor Dee Andrews expressed support as well, and Councilmember Daryl Supernaw mentioned his grandparents are buried at Sunnyside.
Councilmember Al Austin, who represents the 8th District, said he has participated in the Long Beach Historical Society’s (LBHS) annual cemetery tour more than once.
“I’ve tried out my thespian chops there,” he said. “I’ve played the role of many of our historic figures over the years. […] I do understand the value and significance of that.”
Garcia said that LBHS will continue to play an active part in the cemetery’s operation based on its research work.
Roxanne Patmore, a LBHS board member who helps write scripts for the LBHS annual cemetery tour in October, said the society has told 200 stories to about 12,000 people over 23 years.
“Every plot has a story,” she said. “The diversity that is Long beach, you can see in that cemetery. You can see the history, you can see the flu victims, the Scarlet Fever victims, a veteran of every war going back to the Civil War– it’s all there.”
Long Beach resident Christine Rotan said three generations of her family are buried at the cemetery but her 92-year-old mother recently couldn’t find Rotan’s father’s and brother’s headstones and the cemetery was overgrown and full of gopher holes.
Rotan said her father, who passed in 2006, had worked for PRM as a gardener, including at Long Beach cemeteries.
Michael Miner, a cemetery board member, expressed appreciation that Sunnyside will continue after many years of operating on a shoestring budget with one gardener, community-service workers and part-time office volunteers.
“We ran out of money, pure and simple,” he said, adding that he and the rest of the board want to help transition the cemetery to city ownership.
Linda Meador, another Sunnyside Cemetery board member, told the Signal Tribune after the meeting that a lot of details still need to be worked out before the transfer, including maintenance and storage of the cemetery’s records, which she said are currently kept in a fireproof safe in a fireproof room.
“In the past, it has been always been my feeling that those records should stay on the premises because they are basically the bible of the cemetery,” she said. “When somebody comes to us for needing a burial, we need those records to verify that a) they have a plot and b) they’re entitled to it.”
Meador said that the records not only consist of deeds and contracts, but also identify beneficiaries of family trusts who are entitled to use the property.
“Buying a cemetery plot is just like buying a house,” she said. “You’re buying a piece of land and that is yours until you either deed it, quitclaim it, […] or sell it to somebody else. That’s your property.”
She said a lot of people come to the cemetery saying their family is buried there and asking whether there is a plot for them.
“That’s the only means of verification that we have,” she said of the records.
She said volunteers are currently going through the records comparing unoccupied with occupied files, and sometimes have to physically check whether a gravesite is occupied, but finding them takes experience.
“It’s very confusing where graves are located,” she said. “We’re willing to work with the city to help them.”
She said she doesn’t know if the city will want the board to function as an oversight committee, but she doesn’t want to interfere with the city’s operating plan.
“The main thing is that they bring the cemetery back to the beautiful condition that it was in,” she said. “That’s what we all want to see.”
Meador said the board recently authorized watering and mowing again and the cemetery’s appearance has improved since the winter’s torrential rains.
“Other than the dead trees, it really doesn’t look all that bad,” she said.
Watering has been the biggest expense of the cemetery’s approximately $65,000 annual operating budget, she said, covered by interest from the endowment fund.
Meador said she is above all relieved and glad about the city’s support for the cemetery.
“It’s been such a part of my life for 25 years,” she said. “I would hate to not have any involvement, but I’m glad to help where I can.”
