Consultants present cemetery design options: lawn parks, cremation gardens and low-impact amenities

Stephanie Sloan, a cemetery consultant with Sloan Consulting Group, outlined design options and programming that the district’s consultants are considering. Sloan said cemeteries today can serve multiple community functions and emphasized low-impact, park-like approaches such as lawn-level memorials, cremation gardens, and pavilion-style committal shelters that support year-round services. “I have one of the more unique job titles, which is I’m a cemetery consultant…we were engaged by the Snyderville Basin Cemetery District to basically build an initial business plan,” Sloan said.

Greg (landscape architect) described example projects — Provo City Cemetery’s mix of upright monuments and flush markers, cremation gardens with pavilions and niches, and Park City Cemetery’s historic landscaping and sculpture — to show how design choices affect both operations and community use. Sloan and Greg repeatedly stressed the early-stage nature of the work and said pricing, inventory mix and final program elements will be refined in the business-plan phase and through public input. “We’re in the infancy of building that for him,” Sloan said, emphasizing that recommendations are best-practice options rather than decisions.

Consultants invited resident feedback and said subsequent planning steps will incorporate environmental and neighborhood concerns as the district develops a phased master plan.