Clearwater settles lawsuit for $7.5M over graves on firm's private property

Clearwater’s Community Redevelopment Agency has agreed to pay local human resources company FrankCrum $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit involving Black graves on the company’s property at 100 S. Missouri Ave.

The CRA voted unanimously Monday to approve the payout in the lawsuit filed in the Pinellas County Court Sixth Judicial District, ending a more than three-year court battle. But the settlement is just a small piece of a complicated — and understandably emotional — puzzle surrounding what happens to the estimated 300 graves that remain on the property. 

The lawsuit, settled Monday had to do with the warranty that transferred to FrankCrum when it bought the property in 2004. The CRA says the settlement "does not reflect an admission of fault for either party."

Responding to residents who spoke about the site and the graves on it during the hearing Monday, Clearwater Mayor Bruce Rector said, “We want to continue the conversation. This is not over.”

The city, in a statement attributed to the CRA, however says it is not responsible for moving the bodies. “Because the site is privately owned, decisions about the remains rests with Crum Properties, and we hope for a path forward that honors the families connected to this ground.”

In a follow up conversation, a city spokesperson says there is talk is about about putting up some sort of memorial in the North Greenwood neighborhood.

The mayor, who sits on the board of trustees of the Downtown CRA, was not immediately available for comment. 

FrankCrum, in a statement blasting the city, says it had little faith that “a solution” would come from Clearwater’s leadership which it says “refuses to lead” and that it will be up to the community to resolve the problem.

For its part, the company says it will work with community members to help develop a process for how to move forward, though at this point it doesn’t have any answers.

“Let’s be clear, this is not a victory for the descendants of the people who were buried in the former St. Matthews Baptist Church Cemetery, and whose graves were nearly erased,” the company says in the statement.

“This settlement might be a small step in the right direction, but it is one that the city and the CRA fought against for many years. The only reason we have this settlement is that FrankCrum took the city and the CRA to court.”

The legal wrangling began in September 2023 but the issue at hand dates back to the early 1900s. And to understand what happened Monday, one needs to understand what’s happened with this single piece of property in the past century or so.

According to the CRA and the lawsuit filed by FrankCrum, the gravesites are from a Black cemetery established by St. Matthews Baptist Church in a part of the city then known as Clearwater Heights.

St. Matthews first opened in the 1890s or early 1900s and on May 29, 1909, it bought a 2.5-acre site about one mile away from the church to be used as a cemetery. The lawsuit says given the segregation laws at the time, the land “was likely the exclusive resting place for African-Americans between 1909 and 1940.”

The city established a segregated cemetery in the Greenwood neighborhood in 1940.

In the 1950s, with the area’s population booming, the city made some major roadway and sewer improvements near St. Matthew’s Cemetery and later assessed St. Matthew’s Cemetery more than $1,800 for the improvements. It was payable within 30 days, according to the lawsuits.

Unable to pay these fees, St. Matthew’s sold the cemetery property in 1955 to three Clearwater businessmen for $15,000.

In the 1960s, the CRA says, a Montgomery Ward store was built on the site and sat there until the 1980s when the city bought the property and converted it into municipal offices. In 1998, it conveyed the land to the CRA.

In June of that year, the software company Information Management Resources entered into a development agreement on the property. The development was called the Global Center Project.

Included in the development agreement, the lawsuit says, was this statement: “The warranty does not presently include human remains from any cemetery; notwithstanding the fact that the Global Center Site at one time did include a cemetery site, such cemetery has been previously transferred from the Global Center Site and all human remains associated therewith have also been so transferred.”

FrankCrum, which handled more than $3 billion in revenue in 2025 and has some 350 employees, bought the property in 2004 for $13.9 million.

Around 2020, the company had “a desire to expand its corporate campus.” But at the time reports began to circulate in Florida about developments being built on the site of Black graves.

“African American Clearwater residents questioned whether potential graves might also be located in Clearwater,” the lawsuit says and “in 2020, archaeologists began the process of seeking to answer those questions.”

In November of that year, Florida Public Archaeology Network released a report of its study of the land, including parts of an employee parking lot and Missouri Avenue. The study, the lawsuit says, found “characteristics of the potential burials are consistent with the size, shape, depth, and patterning of coffin burials found within a historic cemetery.

“Based on the presence of about 70 potential burials, the report recommended refraining from any ground disturbance in the area.”