P&Z URGES HISTORIC DESIGNATION FOR LANDMARK; FENCE WILL SOON BE BUILT AROUND CEMETERY

The Cape Girardeau Planning and Zoning Commission Wednesday recommended the city council approve a local historic landmark designation for Old Lorimier Cemetery.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission last month made the cemetery its first landmark designation, and sent to planning and zoning a resolution for its consideration. The city council will consider the recommendation next month.

The ordinance would, among other things, regulate "construction, alteration, demolition or excavation," in the cemetery and "replacement of monuments, stones or other markers of grave sites."

The cemetery, which dates to the mid-19th century, is one of the city's oldest landmarks.

In the Historic Preservation Commission's nomination of the 5.3-acre cemetery, commissioners said, "In 1808, Don Louis Lorimier set aside land to be used as a burying ground for the citizens of Cape Girardeau.

"Old Lorimier Cemetery now contains over 1,100 marked graves and an undetermined number of unmarked graves," the application read. "The markers represent styles of monuments covering two centuries."

City Planner Kent Bratton said the cemetery is an appropriate site for the city's first official local historic landmark designation, particularly in this bicentennial year of Cape Girardeau's founding as a trading post.

"In this bicentennial year for the city, I can't think of a more appropriate site for our first historic landmark designation," he said.

Five members of the Historic Preservation Commission attended Wednesday's meeting, and Commissioner John Schneider said a fence soon will be erected around the site.

Schneider said the fence and the "additional teeth" in the historic preservation ordinance should aid the city's efforts to preserve the cemetery, long-plagued by vandalism.

"We would hope we would have a process for locking the gates to the cemetery each evening and opening them again in the morning," he said. "But beyond that, there's a psychological factor about installing a fence.

"In other words, it says we care about this site. People we've talked to have indicated a fence will go an awful long way toward protecting the cemetery."

Bratton said the ordinance will assure that someone caught vandalizing the cemetery will face stiffer penalties than typically applied to vandalism.

Planning and Zoning commissioners said they hoped the historic designation would aid efforts to preserve the cemetery and complete plans to erect a fence.

Bratton said the sign will be erected as soon as the city is able to secure an easement on the northwest side of the cemetery, adjacent to an apartment building.

Among those buried in the cemetery are Louis Lorimier, the founder of Cape Girardeau; Louis Houck, an early prominent resident; George Lewis, reportedly a second cousin to President George Washington; Uriah Brock, a Revolutionary War soldier; George Greene, a Common Pleas Court judge regarded as the founder of the Cape Girardeau public schools; and Alexander Buckner, Missouri's third U.S. senator and a national leader in the Masonic Lodge.

In other business, the commission recommended approval of a request from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to rezone 9.2 acres adjacent to the Wal-Mart Supercenter for the purpose of building a Sam's Wholesale Club store.

Under the proposal the Sam's, which would be comparable in size to Wal-Mart, would lie half outside the city limits.

Wal-Mart already has asked that the property be annexed, but all annexed property automatically is zoned single-family residential making rezoning necessary for the Sam's store.

The commission also recommended approval of a special use permit for a real estate office at 2861 Bloomfield Road in a single-family residential district.

During discussion of the special use permit request, commission chairman Charles Haubold asked whether the commission, at some point, wanted to consider rezoning commercial the entire tract of Bloomfield between Kingshighway and Interstate 55.

The commission also recommended approval of changes in the city's fence regulations and day care ordinance.