Pets in Oak Grove? A master plan has ideas to keep the cemetery active for centuries.

FALL RIVER — Park commissioners, Community Preservation Committee members, Historical Commission members and others took a walking tour of Oak Grove Cemetery last week to get a ground-level view of what might go into a 200-year master plan for the cemetery — everything from lower-maintenance turf to a place for pets.

Last year, Fall River’s assistant planner and former director of cemeteries and trees Chris Parayno successfully pitched the Board of Park Commissioners on the idea of spending $52,000 to develop a master plan for Oak Grove. Parayno and landscape architect Casey-Lee Bastien of BSC Group led the tour, pitching and soliciting ideas.

Oak Grove cover over 100 acres, including 8 that have never been developed and could see new burial space. The master plan is intended to help the cemetery thrive long-term. For now, it’s just a plan.

“Nothing on paper is sacred until you’ve put your hearts into it and said, 'This is good for our community and good for our cemetery,’” Bastien said.

The future of Oak Grove: Fall River's largest cemetery is growing, and developing a master plan

Why is a master plan needed?

Parayno said when he took over as the city’s head of cemeteries in 2018, he was casually told Oak Grove had “about a year” before it became full and would need to close. He was flabbergasted — if the cemetery became inactive, he said, it would become difficult to maintain since the city's resources would be devoted to preparing a new burial ground. And Oak Grove is “more than just a cemetery. … It’s a cultural resource.”

Parayno and his team, with help from BSC Group, recently completed a quick expansion that has added significantly more life to Oak Grove and reduced labor costs. But the master plan is intended to find much more room, find more cost savings, and give the cemetery not just a decade or two of further use but well over a century.

“We want to keep Oak Grove for as long as possible,” Parayno said. “We need to put money into its perpetual care account in order to add money for when the cemetery closes.”

Cemetery maintenance costs are 'unsustainable'

Even as it is, Oak Grove is expensive to maintain — in part because of all the grass. Parayno said cutting all the grass in Oak Grove once takes about 15 days. Trimming it in time for holidays like Memorial Day means staff work more overtime, a drain on the city budget. Switching to a slower-growing grass or a different natural ground cover would reduce those maintenance costs.

“We have to make changes to how we maintain the cemetery,” Parayno said. “It’s completely unsustainable monetarily, environmentally, staffing-wise, for this size. We've got, I’d estimate, somewhere around 50,000 headstones that someone quite literally has to hold a string-trimmer and weed-whack around all four sides. Unless somehow the city miraculously finds a ton of money to increase staffing, it’s just not going to be possible.”

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What is this new expansion, and how much more time does Oak Grove have?

The Oak Grove expansion, which was fully completed last week, is in the northeast corner of the cemetery. A lawn near Oak Grove Avenue has already been prepared with concrete vaults in some locations and headstone foundations, which saves time and money long-term.

It also contains stone obelisks dedicated to honoring members of different groups like first-responders, teachers, scientists and politicians buried in the cemetery. Around the obelisks are columbariums, walls with niches that hold ashes of people who were cremated but still want a permanent memorial in the cemetery.

"You’ve gained another 10 to 15 years with the new section," Bastien said, adding that this is just enough time to plan for further growth.

The expansion is already paying off.

“We thought it would be a little longer, but we’re selling graves at a pretty good clip,” Parayno said. “People like the expansion area and are pre-purchasing graves.” He added that because the cemetery had so little room, it hasn’t allowed pre-purchasing for close to a decade.

Bastien said if every piece of a proposed master plan were implemented, “We can certainly stabilize you for 200 years.”

What kinds of changes are proposed in the master plan?

One major proposal would be to reclaim some little-used redundant roads in the cemetery, including grassy cart paths. A few roads at a time could be turned into grave space, opening up room for burials in the more desirable, historic section of Oak Grove. Parayno and Bastien noted that other historic cemeteries including Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge have done the same.

They’ve also inventoried every tree in the cemetery, and are working to plant some new species – not just to enhance the aesthetics of the cemetery, but to acquire official arboretum status, making the cemetery eligible for maintenance grants.

Bastien said the Prospect Street entrance could also be improved, with the long boarded-up chapel given new life and used for funeral services again. It would be paired with a new parking area that doesn’t detract from the glory of the grand granite and iron archway.

And Oak Grove still has two undeveloped chunks of property kept as woodland. The master plan is proposing to landscape them in a natural way that bridges a gap between Oak Grove’s historic section and the modern lawn-park section. One section with granite ledge underground may be used as a spot for green burials.

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Could Oak Grove Cemetery have a place for pets?

Bastien said with this much land, Fall River could even consider carving out space for pets. He cited a section of Westlawn Cemetery in Littleton that did the same.

“It looks like a separate piece of cemetery, separate gate, because it can be offensive to certain people that there would be animals in the cemetery. It becomes a separate cemetery that you’ve designated for people who are willing to pay to bury a pet or companion animal,” Bastien said. “You have space. Is that something that you would consider doing as a community, here or perhaps elsewhere?”

Before anything is done, master plan proposals will go before the Board of Park Commissioners and the general public to offer input. That will happen in the near future.

“The ideas we’re seeing today are not necessarily unique or groundbreaking," Parayno said. “They're best practices that a lot of historic cemeteries across the nation and here in Massachusetts are implementing. So we really want to find the best practices for this community.”

Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Fall River's Oak Grove Cemetery future could include pets, new space