Things may be looking better at Grand View

The opinion of the News-Press

We are holding our collective breath to find out how things are shaping up for Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery, now that a new owner is finally in place and is apparently taking steps toward revitalizing the property. As we reported this week, news of what the future holds is expected to be made public by the cemetery’s management by some time in October.

The puns are almost too hard to avoid when a dead cemetery comes back to life. The locked and effectively abandoned Grand View, set on once-idyllic acreage in northwest Glendale, has been a point of contention and frustration for its nearby residents for years. After all, who wants to live next to a place that has been mired in financial woes and, as a result, has become almost spooky enough to serve as a setting for a Stephen King novel?

This is not to cast aspersions on the volunteers who have done what they could to care for the property over the past several years. They’re the ones who made it possible to be opened on Sunday afternoons so people could visit the resting places of their loved ones while the search was on for a new owner. These volunteers have offered the community a valuable service and are due our thanks. But the cemetery, first opened in the late 1800s, was in dire need of extensive renovations when it was finally sold to a corporation in May. We hope the company follows through on plans to rejuvenate it and that the gates are thrown open to daily visitors once again. Seriously. This never-ending story of sad decline needs an upbeat plot twist.