The beleaguered Denver Pet Cemetery has a new owner, yet the grounds are still in bad condition more than a year after pet owners first raised concerns about it.
9NEWS first questioned the fate of the pet cemetery in early 2015, when owners contacted the station,
concerned after visiting the Commerce City cemetery and finding overgrown grass covering the grave sites, trash all over the grounds and what appeared to be ashes on the grounds.
The owner sold the cemetery in October to a new owner, Paul Gidlund.
Gidlund set up a new website for the cemetery, offering all services including burial and cremation.
But 9NEWS discovered, almost a year later, the cemetery is still not operating. Viewers who own pets buried at the cemetery contacted us about worsening conditions at the site.
“We started repairing gas lines for the crematorium,” Gidlund told 9NEWS.
He doesn’t plan on restarting the business until the crematorium is operational. There are several leaks in the gas lines. Gidlund says several have been repaired, but others remain.
A recent visit to the cemetery revealed the once-green grass is brown. There are still several areas with weeds growing as well.
“We let the ground dry up so bad that they can’t grow anyway, you can see all the graves, it’s not that bad,” Gidlund told 9News by phone.
There also appears to be an abandoned car on the property. A friend of the cemetery owner working at the site earlier this month told 9News that car belonged to an employee and would soon be moved. The car remained there last week.
When first questioned about the future of the cemetery, Gidlund seemed frustrated by pet owners constantly questioning him about the conditions of the cemetery.
“I might decide to just close the cemetery, and give the people time to remove their property if they wish to keep it,” he said when contacted by 9NEWS initially. “I didn’t promise anyone lifetime care for the graves.”
When contacted again later, Gidlund clarified that he doesn’t currently intend to close the cemetery.
Still, it’s concerning to those who have pets buried on the property.
DeAnn Hawthorne once worked at the Pet Cemetery under a previous owner. She has three dogs buried on the property and visited for the first time in a long time last week.
“This is not something you do to any cemetery,” she said standing near the graves of her dogs. “A lot of these pets are like family to people.”
