Residents of Denver’s Pinehurst Estates neighborhood breathed a collective sigh of relief after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently reversed course on a cemetery construction project that had sparked indignation locally.
“How many times in life do you have something where the resolution really does satisfy all the parties?” resident Carol Andrew said Friday.
She and other homeowners abutting Fort Logan National Cemetery sounded alarms late last year over the VA’s expansion of its hallowed grounds, which had begun in November. Plans included building a 9-foot-tall, half-mile-long columbarium wall on the property’s south side near their houses, and creating space over 20 acres for 9,100 burial areas for casketed remains and more than 19,000 markers for cremated remains.
Neighbors argued that the new addition would obstruct their views and hurt their property values, and decried a lack of government transparency around the project.
The VA previously reported that plans began in 2019 — unbeknownst to the residents — and Congress allotted project funds in the 2022 fiscal year budget.
However, locals learned on Jan. 31 that the columbarium would be relocated, according to a letter from VA officials shared with The Denver Post by a neighbor. Months of construction came to a halt while revised plans were formed.
“The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will relocate the planned columbarium court and wall to a location within the interior of Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver, Colorado, in response to concerns from the community over its location,” the agency said in a statement to The Post.
Cemetery director Roderick “Tony” Thomas directed questions to the VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management.
Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn, whose district includes Pinehurst Estates, said, “I am grateful to the (VA) for listening to the neighbors, who have deep respect for Fort Logan National Cemetery, and who wanted the best outcomes for all concerned.”
Before the neighborhood homeowner association’s annual meeting on Feb. 1, Andrew had been prepared to continue to fight against the VA’s plans. The group was ready to send a signed letter about the issue to its congressional delegation.
But instead, after sharing the relocation news, meeting attendees bubbled with joy, she said — and even incredulity.
“To ask the VA to pause a construction project that was in progress and reevaluate it is an ambitious task, right?” Andrew said.
Some harm was still done, with resident Henry Navarro, a retired U.S. Army Ranger, estimating that more than 100 trees were cut down in the process. “That should have never happened, but it did,” he said Friday.
The drama over the VA expansion had Navarro and his wife considering a move from Pinehurst Estates to the mountains or El Paso County. But the resolution is keeping the lifelong Denverite where he is — in a house near the nursing home of his wife’s centenarian grandmother and bordering the resting place of his buried loved ones.
Navarro chalked it up as “a major win.”
And now, Andrew is busying herself with delivering gift baskets and writing thank you notes. Andrew is looking forward to further updates from the VA, including the publication of an official news release.
“We’re very grateful that they listened,” she said.
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