Funeral giant selling off Conejo Mountain cemetery
By Daniel Wolowicz camarillo@theacorn.com

Houston-based Carriage Services, Inc. announced Monday that it will buy the Conejo Mountain Funeral Home and Memorial Park in Camarillo.

Carriage Services is buying the 119-acre property from Cincinnati-based Alderwoods Group for an undisclosed amount, according to company reports.

Pamala Beardsley, general manager of Conejo Mountain Funeral Home and Memorial Park, would not comment on the deal or whether the sale will result in job cuts at the 41-year-old Camarillo cemetery.

"The acquisition will be Carriage's entry into the Southern California market and will position us to develop similar opportunities in the greater Los Angeles market with the goal of building a concentrated group of quality operating assets similar to our portfolio in the San Francisco Bay Area," Melvin C. Payne, Carriage Services' chairman and CEO said in a press release.

The cemetery sale is expected to close in early 2007. It is one of 55 locations that Service Corporation International--the company buying Alderwoods Group for $856 million--must sell to meet U.S. Federal Trade Commission antitrust requirements. SCI began the buyout of Alderwoods Group in April, the company said.

Headquartered in Houston, SCI is the largest funeral company in the United States and will have more than 2,000 funeral service and cemetery locations throughout North America with nearly $2.3 billion in revenue once it acquires Alderwoods Group, SCI said.

Carriage Services, the company purchasing the Conejo Mountain cemetery, is the fourth largest funeral company in the United States. It operates 131 funeral homes in 27 states and 28 cemeteries in 11 states and posted over $155 million in revenue last year.

According to the Conejo Mountain cemetery's website, Mary Howard Smith of Camarillo sold 119 acres of her family's ranch in 1965 for the cemetery. Although the property spans more than 100 acres, less than a third has been used for burial plots.

The cemetery's chapel, Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church of Port Hueneme, was moved from the port to its current location in the mid 1960s. The chapel offers nondenominational services.