Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery (photo from Facebook)
For more than 150 years, Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery has operated in Preston Hollow, the final resting place of Dallas dignitaries like businesswoman Mary Kay Ash, baseball star Mickey Mantle and billionaire H.L. Hunt, who was once the richest man in the world. Now, the cemetery is hoping to get its logistical ducks in a row with a request to amend their special use permit (Sup), which hasn’t been updated in decades.
After being donated by landowner William Barr Caruth, Dallasites have been buried on the site since the 1850s. For the first hundred years, no city intervention was required for the business to operate. Then, in 1964, an act of City Council created a SUP for the site, giving detailed directions for how that land could operate. As the years went by, the cemetery continued to grow, and the SUP was updated about once a decade to reflect that, until 1987.
The cemetery, owned by Houston-based SCI Texas Funeral Services Inc., is now asking the council to formalize a site plan for the 91-acres of land as it exists today. “The new site plan will identify areas for future building areas for cemetery-related structures, such as mausoleum, columbarium and maintenance facilities, as well as identifying floor area limitations for each building area,” [sic], the zoning application requests.
Basically, since it was last updated in 1987, the cemetery has acquired some additional land and wants to make sure it is all covered under the city’s SUP. All of the landscaping and other requirements already spelled out in the existing SUP would remain in place, and additional guidelines could be set for future structures planned on the hallowed site.
See the specific request below:
