Despite written objections,
Orange County approves a new location for a funeral and cremation business in the Apopka area.
Ladonna Avila, who has lived in northwest Orange County for over a quarter century, finds the newest business coming to the neighborhood a little creepy.
But that’s not what spurred the 70-year-old widow and exotic bird-rescuer to write county officials pleading with them to keep out Waldon Professional Funeral & Cremation Services.
“It’s just one more thorn,” she said of the new business she expects will add to traffic she dodges while crossing the road to fetch her mail. “When I moved out here 30 years ago, it was so wonderful, nice, peaceful — a little bit of heaven.”
Despite written objections, Orange County commissioners this week went unanimously against the recommendation of the board of zoning adjustment, which sided with residents opposed to the undertakers’ proposed undertaking.
Neighbors fretted about setting a precedent that may spawn more development, potential impacts on property values, and ash and odors from the crematory.
County planners had argued the funeral and cremation service belonged in a commercial area and not one zoned for homes, growing foliage, oranges and vegetables, or raising pigs and goats.
But business owner Kristy Waldon, a state-licensed funeral director and embalmer since 2004, showed commissioners several similar businesses operating nearby, including two pet crematoriums.
She also produced a chart that showed diesel trucks, residential fireplaces and school buses belch out denser emissions than a properly filtered crematorium.
Although Apopka objected to the proposed site of Waldon’s funeral business as incompatible, City Commissioner Kyle Becker supported her.
“Her industry is not something we like to think about,” he wrote. “But it is clear she serves her clients in their times of difficulty with grace and professionalism.”
Waldon, whose lease on her
“So much of this comes from emotional views of cremation.” Barbara Kremmis, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America
State Road 46 location is expiring, wants to move to a 5-acre site at 3560 Plymouth Sorrento Road, just west of Apopka.
She plans to build an addition for a crematorium.
The location previously was used to cultivate plant tissue for growers of clematis, brightly colored flowering vines better known as Old Man’s Beard.
Waldon handles burials and cremations for indigent persons in Orange County. She has buried or cremated about 500 people under the contract, awarded in June 2015, according to county records.
The pact is estimated by county officials to be up to $721,000 over three years.
Waldon said she also wanted to relocate because aside from her county contract, most of her other clients are Orange County residents.
Though her parents tried to discourage her from a career in mortuary science, her mother, Jacqueline, 60, spoke up for her daughter during the hearings before zoning board members and county commissioners.
“She has this gift to make someone dead look alive,” her mother said.
Commissioner Pete Clarke urged Waldon’s new neighbors to give her and the business a chance.
He recalled the concerns of residents when the medical examiner’s office relocated to East Michigan Street in 2009.
“Probably the prospect of having an M.E.’s office in your neighborhood is probably a little more chilling than having a crematorium … [But] we’ve not had an issue. I think this is probably what they’re going to see with this facility,” he said.
Many objections to crematories are based on concerns about ash and odors, which have been mostly eliminated by new technologies, said Barbara Kremmis, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America.
“So much of this comes from emotional views of cremation,” she said.
Cremations surpassed burials in 2016 for the first time since the association began tracking records.