Connecticut veterans affairs ID’s plot near Middletown state cemetery for small expansion

MIDDLETOWN — State veterans officials are working on a small, immediate expansion of the 21-acre State Veterans Cemetery grounds, which is projected to run out of room for buried cremains by July 2027.

Charles Pickett, state commander of the New Haven-based Veterans of Foreign Wars Connecticut division, who runs the Save our Cemetery website, has called the issue an “impending crisis.”

He has been advocating for a cemetery annex for some time.

The move is expected to extend the cemetery’s capacity for about five years, according to state Department of Veterans Affairs Deputy Commissioner John S. Carragher. 

The land abutting the columbarium, located at 197 Bow Lane and adjacent to the cemetery, was previously owned by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and is part of the overall cemetery property, Carragher added. 

It was “declared excess to their needs in 2020 and subsequently placed under the care and custody of CT DVA,” he continued. 

The flat and grassy plot, formerly used by Connecticut Valley Hospital, is approximately half-an-acre, he said, and includes a circa 1950 Colonial revival structure informally known as Cottage 22.

“We are in the process of surveying the plot to formally move it from the larger CVH plot to the current cemetery plot. We are planning on taking down the cottage to maximize the available space,” Carragher said.

The total acreage of land to be expanded upon is “unknown until the project is fully designed,” Carragher said.

“We have less than an acre on the current cemetery site in Middletown,” he said. “We’re going to have to take down a building if we can get approval to do that. That would provide some additional time.” 

Last year, the DVA had to decline a $4 million federal grant after Middletown officials rejected a request to expand the cemetery.

Common Council members voted unanimously in November 2024 not to sell about 90 acres of open space to the state for a much-needed annex. That property, on Bow Lane and parts of Cedar Lane and Reservoir Road, is among five parcels totaling 256 acres of land near the hospital.

The agency went through a very competitive national process to apply for a limited amount of money through the National Cemetery Administration’s Veterans Cemetery Grants Program. 

DVA Commissioner Ron Welch, who spoke during the office’s September podcast, said finding a larger, permanent expansion continues to be officials’ top priority. 

Cremains spots are four-by-four feet in size, he added.

“We’re looking for 50 to 100 buildable acres, ideally, somewhere in the central part of the state,” he told the program host. 

The DVA has been searching across Connecticut, he added, looking at some 15 sites, three of which he expects will undergo feasibility studies.

Although the state hasn’t specified where the sites are, Welch said during the episode one is in the eastern part of the state, and others in the western and south central portions of Connecticut.

Pickett is hopeful knowing a temporary solution is underway.

“It is heartening to see progress into the expansion of the Middletown cemetery,” he said Friday. “It buys the state more time to find a suitable replacement.”