MACOMB TOWNSHIP — Card. Foss. Wade. These are not just the names of roads and businesses, but of families that have lived in and shaped Macomb Township.
Published February 18, 2025
MACOMB TOWNSHIP — Card. Foss. Wade. These are not just the names of roads and businesses, but of families that have lived in and shaped Macomb Township.
Macomb Township is also where members of these and other families have been buried.
At its Feb. 12 meeting, the Macomb Township Board of Trustees granted approval to the township supervisor’s office to pursue the acquisition of the Macomb Center Cemetery.
“Macomb Township currently does not have title to the property to where the Macomb-Whitney Cemetery is located, therefore we cannot legally expend any public money to maintain it,” Township Supervisor Frank Viviano said. “It is effectively abandoned. Title work has been done. All of the names that are on the title work are people that have passed away more than 50 years ago. In order for us to at least maintain the site, we’re going to have to go through a legal process.”
Also known as Whitney Cemetery, the plot is located along 24 Mile Road between Card and Foss roads in a condition that appears to be somewhat abandoned. Headstones are maintained and flags adorn graves of Civil War veterans — indicating some attention has been given to the site — but some ground-level headstones have been overtaken by grass. The aging fence surrounding the cemetery is rusted, misaligned and even broken in some sections.
Viviano plans to have the township’s contracted attorneys, Aloia & Associates, “open up some estates” through the probate court in an attempt to acquire titles from “personal representative(s)” of the estates. Condemning the cemetery due to neglected maintenance was another route discussed, though Viviano believed condemnation would be “a more costly process.”
Viviano expressed no interest in operating the cemetery as an active burial site. Josh Bocks, township planning director, told trustees that registering the cemetery was something the township was warned against.
“The state, the folks from LARA’s licensing division we spoke to, urged us not to register this,” Bocks said. “It’s a lot of red tape involved and not something that we would want to do, nor would it benefit us.”
Legal costs would be billed by the hour based on time expended. The property itself is likely limited to the fenced-in cemetery. Macomb Center Cemetery is surrounded by a South Macomb Disposal Authority landfill. Maintenance of the cemetery would be a line item in the township budget.
Town center developments
Trustees also approved the development plan for Scavo Farms, a residential development featuring single and multi-family residences.
It is an update to a prior plan in order to share a retention basin with another development. The development is located along 25 Mile Road west of Broughton Road.
To accommodate development along the planned extension of Broughton Road, trustees approved installing a water main along Broughton between 23 1/2 Mile Road to 24 1/2 Mile Road at the cost of $3.83 million. The cost includes engineering as well as construction, which will be funded by a developer south of 24 Mile Road.
The main is scheduled to be installed during the road construction.
