Arlington Heights says no to funeral home move

A proposal to relocate Lauterberg & Oehler Funeral Home from its current location on Northwest Highway to Memory Gardens Cemetery - which seemed like a sure thing after an Arlington Heights village board meeting two weeks ago - was denied at Monday night's meeting.

Service Corporation International, owner of both the cemetery and the funeral home, was seeking a zoning variance to build in the cemetery. The area is zoned only for residential development.

Stephen Daday, an attorney representing SCI, said the funeral home might move out of the village if it's not allowed to build in the cemetery.

The preliminary vote July 20 to allow the variance was 7-1 in favor of the funeral home.

However, on Monday, the village board voted 6-2 against an ordinance that would have allowed the project to move forward. Thomas Hayes and Helen Jensen voted for the project.

Mayor Arlene Mulder said the refusal of SCI to shift the proposed building farther east on Euclid Avenue, away from homes on Waterman Avenue, changed her vote. In the planned location it would "impact the character of the neighborhood," which is prohibited by the ordinance, she said.

Shifting the funeral home site in Memory Gardens would require moving maintenance buildings at an estimated cost of $500,000, Daday said, and putting a funeral home that far inside a cemetery was not considered good business practice.

Trustees who had voted in favor of the measure two weeks ago asked critical questions on Monday - they specifically questioned whether SCI could claim a hardship if the variance was denied. Proving hardship is another of the requirements of the zoning ordinance.

At at least 16 area residents came to Monday's meeting to speak out against the project; many said having a commercial venture so close to their homes would hurt property values. Arlington Heights Trustee Thomas Stengren, who also is a Realtor, agreed a funeral home in the proposed location would hurt neighbors' property values.

Elena Coughlin, a sophomore at Illinois State University, said she had baby-sat for many of the families on Waterman and they did not deserve "a 12,000-square-foot business in their front yards."

Daday added that the company had tried to sell some of the property for allowed uses, such as single-family homes or a church, over the past several years-even when the real estate market was booming-and failed.