Photo / Tina Fischer
The Conroy-Tully Walker funeral home under construction in Portland.
Updated: January 23, 2025
With new construction, a new approach to the funeral business
Photo / Tina Fischer
The Conroy-Tully Walker funeral home under construction at 300 Allen Ave. in Portland.
By Tina Fischer
Owners of the Conroy-Tully Walker funeral homes are creating a different kind of care center at their newest building, under construction at 300 Allen Ave. in Portland.
“We envision this as more of a memorial event center than a funeral home,” Adam Walker told Mainebiz. “A place to celebrate life. Often, families engage a funeral home to handle the cremation or burial of a loved one, and then seek out another venue for receptions or celebrations. We want to offer them the ability to do all that right here.
“The new home will have big gathering areas with seating for about 150, plus a more informal reception area, and an outdoor patio where in the cold weather we’ll have a fire pit. We are fully equipped to have catering, drinks, and live music.”
When completed in August, the new building will feature large windows to bring in natural light, and an open-concept layout with what Walker described as “cool and calming colors. We’re finding that families don’t want to walk into a dark and somber funeral home. We don’t want people to think of traditional funeral homes when they come in.
“The new building will have bright new offices too, with much more space for staff, as well as a state-of-the-art care center ensuring dignity for decedents and safety for staff,” Walker added. “This can be very daunting work; it’s 24 hours a day, 365 days a year that a death can occur and people need our services. Our staff works very hard. At our State Street home, they’ve been working in cramped quarters. That building is 200 years old.”
Growing business
This will be the company’s fourth property. The location at 172 State St. has been in operation since 1960, just a year after the company was founded.
Walker and his wife Caitlin bought the company 10 years ago. They own two more facilities, on Broadway in South Portland and in the Springvale section of Sanford.
“We bought the Allen Avenue property in 2022, after 5 to 10 years of looking for a lot in Portland that was large enough to do this. We took two to three years designing this, working with [Portland-based] Harriman Architecture and Design, to be sure we’re doing everything right for our community and for our staff as well," Walker said.
Walker expects construction costs at the 9,899-square-foot building to run close to $3.6 million; the project is financed by Norway Savings Bank.
“There was a lot of site work needed; this was a very difficult site to build on," he said. "The lot is just under 2 acres, in a split zone — part residential, part residential business.”
The site had been empty save for a house which Walker said wasn’t salvageable.
Gorrill Palmer, of South Portland, was the engineer, and Benchmark Construction, of Westbrook, is managing the build.
The new facility will have nearly 70 parking spaces and initially five electric car charging stations, which city planners encouraged. “We’re laying the conduits so we could eventually have 25 stations.”
Walker noted that in addition to seeing a shift in how families celebrate their loved ones, the industry is seeing cremations becoming more and more the norm for the business.
“About 70% of our families are choosing cremation; it’s about 80% statewide. We’ve seen a big shift in the past 10 years, when it was only about 40%," he said. "We’ve seen a big change since COVID, too, though we’re not sure why. But a lot of baby boomers are starting to pass away and the baby boomers have really changed the way we do so many things now. So it seems to be a cultural shift.”
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