Brookfield Township has established a pricing schedule for the niches in the newly installed columbarium, an above-ground vessel for the burial of cremated remains, in Brookfield Township Cemetery.
The schedule charges the highest price for niches at eye level. There are six levels so, for a single niche purchased for a township resident, the cost would be $1,600 for a niche at ground level, $1,800 for the next two higher levels, $2,000 for levels four and five, and $1,800 for the top level.
Niches can be bought two at a time for prices ranging from $2,600 to $3,000.
Nonresident prices are from $2,100 to $2,500, with the cost of two running from $3,100 to $3,500.
The schedule runs the middle ground of the prices charged at three other cemeteries. Fredenburg looked at the pricing schedules at Bazetta, Niles and Lake Park, Youngstown, cemeteries.
Unlike the pricing policy with full-body burials, the columbarium pricing schedule “would include the cost of the niche itself, the cremation spot; it would include the opening and closing to put the cremation in; and then it would also include the lettering on the panel,” Fredenburg said.
“I think that’s a piece of mind for somebody,” he said a single-price system covering all of the listed items. “Most of the other places that I’ve talked to, for the most part, they’re all doing the same thing.”
There will be limits on the carving of the niche face, including type face, amount of lettering and emblems, and that policy still is to be worked out.
While Fredenburg still has to lay out the section of cemetery in which the columbarium has been installed and see to landscaping the section, he said he still is on track to have the columbarium open to burials this summer.
