Advocates push City of Tampa to buy land near Marti-Colon cemetery
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The Marti-Colon cemetery is one of Tampa’s oldest, providing a final resting place for generations of West Tampa families since the 1800’s.
It’s also been the source of decades of controversy.
The land is now owned by the City of Tampa, but a previous owner kept poor records and it’s likely people were buried well beyond the limits of the current boundaries of the cemetery. Those graves were not properly documented and not given permanent grave markers.
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In March, a Jewish group asked the Tampa City Council to rezone a parcel of land just south of the cemetery so they could make a new cemetery for people of their faith.
However, the group withdrew their request after they paid for a survey by ground-penetrating radar. The survey revealed there are likely many unmarked graves on the land that now appears vacant.
“So, we have pivoted and we are now exploring facilitating a purchase by the city to codify and protect this sacred space as a historic cemetery for the citizens of Tampa,” said Rabbi Mendy Dubrowski who is a part of the group that was looking to buy the land.
His group was not under any legal obligation to do the GPR survey of the land.
“Well, we are ultimately community servants. No matter which faith you serve, once you put on the collar, so to speak, you serve the people and so even if it doesn’t serve our faith tradition, we want to make sure the right thing is done for the community,” said Rabbi Dubrowski.
Aileen Henderson is part of the cemetery society and said the city needs to do the right thing and buy the open property.
“My understanding is that they were 78 anomalies that they found and so typically what that means is, that there is the potential for graves to be buried underneath,” said Henderson.
She says it’s been suspected for some time there are unmarked graves on the land.
“The city should have purchased it. We know that they purchased part of it in July of 2023, so why on earth didn’t we purchase what’s less than an acre left of the land that has been under controversy for years and years and years,” said Henderson.
The City of Tampa has not announced any plans to purchase the property at this time.
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