To die for: at Indonesia cemetery, developer adds recreational facilities

Here on the outskirts of Jakarta, an Indonesian developer is taking a very American idea in real estates-the exclusive, upscale cemetery-and adding a twist: a country club, complete with swimming pools, a boating lake and a big Italian restaurant.

San Diego Hills, which is based on renowned Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale, California, is billed by its developers, Indonesia’s Lippo Group, as the world’s first cemetery with recreational facilities.

“We wanted to create something pleasant,” says Viven Sitiabudi, president director of PT. Lippo Karawaci, the Lippo Group unit developing the project. “Families should look at visiting their loved ones as a happy occasion rather than with dread.”

As Southeast Asia’s middle class grows, American-inspired real-estates developments have captured the imagination of local property companies. Mammoth malls, multiscreen cineplexes, posh gated communities and satellite towns are becoming popular, buoyed by low interest rates and 5%-to-7% annual economic growth in much of Southeast Asia.

But as San Diego Hills shows, Asian developers can sometimes outdo their American role models in glitz and kitsch. There is Vivo City in Singapore, which features shops and restaurants, a park with amphitheatre for concerts, spas, dance clubs, and yellow-uniformed concierges that move around on Segway electric scooters. A 10-story mall in Kuala Lumpur features roller-coasters in its atrium. In China, developers of luxury residential property are building complexes in the style of English manor houses of French chateaux.

San Diego Hills, though, is perhaps the only of the new developments that can claim to be a true world first.

The Lippo Group, run by 77-year-old banking tycoon Mochtar Riady, saw Indonesia’s middle class balking at putting loved ones to rest in over crowded government-manage-cemeteries, and sensed a business opportunity.

The inspiration of Indonesia’s first memorial park came from Mr. Riady’s son, James, a U.S.-educated pal of Clinton administration, who paid the largest political fine in American history in 2001 for illegally reimbursing campaign contributions to the Democratic Party.

A devout Christian, the younger Riady visited Forest Lawn a few years ago and decided Indonesia needed a similar development. He hired a Philippines-born American, Manuel Francisco, who had 20 years experience marketing private cemeteries in California, to oversee construction of San Diego Hills.

But then, Mr. Francisco says, James Riady hit on the idea of expanding to include recreational facilities. “He wanted to add an element that was not found in any other cemetery in the world.” Mr. Francisco says.

In the U.S., some cemeteries offer flower shops, cafés and area for children to play. The Lippo decided to take San Diego Hills further. There is “Lake Angeles” for boating, swimming pools, and a basketball court, in addition to an Italianate convention center and boutiques. There are plans to open 200-seat luxury Italian restaurant.

The chapel will conduct wedding ceremonies as well as funeral services. Eager to attrack Islamic clients (Indonesia is 90% Muslim), Lippo has also built an imposing mosque on the site.

“We’re giving families another reason to keep coming back to visit their departed loved ones,” Mr. Francisco says. “In addition to paying their respects they can be entertained, too”

With 130 dying people each day Jakarta, competition for burial space is so fierce that, in some cases, fresh graves are dug on top of folder ones if relatives have failed to keep up “rent” payments due every three years to the city council.

San Diego Hills, which is promising never to disturb a body once buried, is already attracting interest. “It’s beautiful,” says Elsye Phaais, who works for the Tabita Foundation, a company that arranges burials in Jakarta for its 23,000 members. “It’s different from existing cemeteries, which are something frightening.”

So far, the developer says it has sold 1,000 plots. With a basic package of $900 for a space in public area, or almost an average yearly wage in Jakarta, it is only for the country’s elite. For premium family plots the price spikes to $3,300 per square meter.

Among the first to buried there: the senior Mr. Riady’s parents, who emigrated to Indonesia in 1918 from China’s Fujian province. Mr. Riady a publicity-shy multimillion-aire who own properties in Shanghai and Hongkong, writes in the brochure that visiting his parents in the cemetery where they were initially buried was “an inconvenience and hardship, with pickpockets, vendors and sense of insecurity.”

Jimmy Sandjaja, a 56-year-old factory owner, recently bought lots for himself and his wife in the Christian section of San Diego. “When I saw the Riady family was buried in San Diego Hills, I thought they’re doing this with heart,” he says. “They’ll look after it.”

Lippo Group is starting out with a small area to test demand. But developers have earmarked 500 hectars of rolling tropical countryside for the project-about twice the size of a large private cemetery in the U.S. and equal to the combined land area of Jakarta’s 95 crowded public cemeteries. Lippo executives say as many as one million people could be buried here. Mr. Francisco says he is aiming for $19 million in sales in the first year.

But he acknowledges that San Diego Hills, with its mix of death and recreation, throws up some unique marketing challenges. “We started out by calling it a recreation center,” he says of the complex, now renamed a family center. “But it wasn’t too much in line with the solemnity of a cemetery.”