Crematorium Controversy

In September, a South Bend funeral home went before the city council with a zoning petition and special exception request to build a crematorium about a half mile from its current location. The funeral home said they needed to build their own facility in order to keep up with the rapidly rising cremation rate. But, their proposal was met with much criticism from neighbors who didn’t want a crematorium built near their homes. The land where Zahoran Funeral Home wanted to install the crematorium was zoned as light industrial, but backed up to a residential area. Neighbors raised concerns about having odd odors coming from the crematorium and how it could negatively impact their property values. So, I decided to head to a couple other South Bend neighborhoods that have crematoriums and find out firsthand how they were impacting neighbors.