Some call the site an eyesore, but to Harford County skateboarding community members, “Ledgewood” is their paradise.
It’s a grassroots skatepark in Edgewood built on the deteriorating pink-and-green surface of an old tennis court with hand-built cinderblock ledges and ramps and hand-poured cement for obstacles behind the Boys and Girls Club. It has served local youths for 15 years.
Now the beloved Ledgewood has been leveled and work has started on a professionally built, plaza-style skatepark funded by $100,000 in state grants led by the 755 Alliance.
“We really couldn’t skate anywhere without the police showing up or a business telling us to leave,” said Michael Wheatley, a skateboarder who helped build Ledgewood. “We really just wanted a place of our own.”
DIY skateparks are regarded as an art form in the skateboarding community, despite the reality that at any moment the park could be destroyed by a property owner. The absence of any one skateboarder owning the park coupled with investments made by the skateboarding community is what former Ledgewood contributor, Dan Zankowitz, said gives DIY skateparks a sacred, creative feel.
“The fun thing about DIY is that it just happens and then out of nowhere, the DIY just grows into this awesome thing that means a lot to a lot of people,” Zankowitz said. “That’s what is cool about these spots is they are clean slates and then people get together to build stuff they want to skate and they blossom.”
A typical summer evening at Ledgewood would be about 10 to 15 skaters, grilling food, hanging out and filming skate montage videos, covered in light pink or green scrapes from falling on the tennis court.
The 755 Alliance identified Ledgewood as a project in 2019 when it was doing a community cleanup in the area. BangTam Miller, the alliance’s founder, said she thought a skatepark was a great idea for the site and that the redevelopment project would assist the alliance in achieving an important affiliation leading to state grants.
“This is our way of preserving what some people have started and honor that work by fixing it up for them and making it safe,” Miller said.
Harford County Council member Nolanda Robert, who represents the Edgewood area, said she likes the Ledgewood redevelopment project since it gives kids an activity to do and is a step in the right direction for Edgewood to have more “kid-friendly” amenities.
“I find that Edgewood is lacking in kid-friendly places like bowling alleys, arcades and other places that can be family friendly,” Robert said. “I am hoping to see that change over the next coming year or two.”
Miller and the alliance consulted Beau Barlow, who runs Ledgewood Zoo — a social media page for Ledgewood that started around 2020 to differentiate from the original Ledgewood page — to design the new park.
Barlow, who began building onto Ledgewood in recent years as part of his brand Super Stone Skateboarding, formerly owned two skateparks — State of Confusion in Rosedale and Migration Skatepark in Forest Hill.
Both have since closed. With his background in running skateparks, building obstacles and knowledge of the street-style skating Ledgewood catered to, he wanted to keep the new design as close to the original layout as possible.
In his design, he kept a few of the original iconic structures like a 20-foot quarter pipe, but had the majority of the original structures removed and rebuilt. When the project’s progress was posted on social media by the alliance in April, Barlow faced backlash from local skaters for not consulting with them on the design of the park, and for “taking over” the park.
“Beau made an effort to save something that wasn’t his like he is a savior or something,” said Zankowitz, one of the original Ledgewood builders who grew up with Barlow. “I think it’s an opportunity for him and a lot of us are upset because we don’t know why there wasn’t an attempt to let us know what was going on.”
Barlow said when he was asked to help with the project, he was told the $100,000 in grant funding was nearing expiration and the alliance needed a design quickly so it could start building and keep the funding.
He said part of the reason he kept the majority of the park’s original design was because he knew that is what local Ledgewood skaters wanted.
“I wanted to have a community meeting but [the alliance] said there wasn’t time and they needed a design pretty quickly,” Barlow said. “There is stuff in the design that makes it for everybody but it doesn’t take away what Ledgewood has been. In my heart, I believe this is what everyone wants.”
According to 3D renderings, the design maintains Ledgewood’s open, plaza, street-style design and doesn’t incorporate big ramps or half-pipes — something many local skaters agreed was a good call by Barlow.
When the project was first announced, a rumor circulated that the tennis court Ledgewood was located on — which is owned by the Harford County Board of Education — was going to be razed and turned into a grass field.
The school system said it did not plan to raze the park, but from a risk management standpoint, the school system did not want to be held liable for a skatepark. Once the project is finished, the school system’s manager of communications, Jillian Lader, said the park will be signed over to the Harford County government.
Weather permitting, Miller said the project should be completed in June.
Ledgewood skaters, like Wheatley and Zankowitz, do not particularly see the redevelopment as a bad thing for the park, but to them, Ledgewood was more than a project. It was a masterpiece built on a blank canvas, sculpted by passion and a real sense of community.
Standing on the dirt lot that was home to the park he and his friends took pride in, Wheatley, now 32, looked around, kicked some of the concrete chips in the dirt and sighed.
“It is soul crushing to see it like this,” he said.
Wheatley and his friend, Nathan Martin, 29, were the two who initially found the location for Ledgewood around 2009.
The two navigated a patch of woods to escape scrutiny from police for skateboarding near a local business when they discovered the abandoned, overgrown tennis court near Edgewood Elementary School behind the local Boys and Girls Club.
“We talked to the Boys and Girls Club and they were okay with us being there as long as we tried not to get hurt and it kind of took off from there,” Martin said. “So we came back the next day with weed whackers and cleared the weeds and got to work.”
Building Ledgewood at the start was a donation to vandals and thieves as all of the ramps and metal structures were either stolen or destroyed. Wheatley, Martin and a group of their friends leaned on the skate community for help and paid a visit to their friend, John Mosmiller, owner of Skatology Board Shop in Bel Air.
Mosmiller helped the teens buy cinderblocks and angle iron so they could build a sturdy, cement ledge. Mosmiller, in turn, crafted the name “Ledgewood” as a play on the name “Edgewood” and the first obstacle built at the DIY park.
A donation jar was set up in Skatology to help fund the DIY park and over time, the vandalism and theft stopped, and the park grew.
On Go Skate Day 2010 — the biggest holiday in skateboarding — Wheatley and Martin recalled retrieving water from a nearby creek to mix cement. Dozens spent the day helping craft one of Ledgewood’s first cement obstacles, a manual pad.
Zankowitz, owner of a construction company and builder of many iconic Ledgewood structures, was later called to help fix the manual pad after the teens couldn’t figure out how to smooth the surface for clean riding.
“The thing about DIY, is it is just a group of people getting together, building stuff, messing up and figuring it out,” Zankowitz said. “There is something special about DIY and the opportunity to work together to make something blossom. It is an art form.”
Zankowitz went on to build a quarter pipe with his 4-year-old son at Ledgewood along with a 20-foot quarter pipe with two ledges and a manual pad built into it.
The park exploded in popularity as skateboarders from all over the county frequented the spot. Go Skate Days grew to become a celebration and excitement for new obstacles mounted each time bags of concrete were placed around the park.
Ledgewood gained attention of professional skateboarders around its peak in 2014 when popular brands would stop by as part of their tours.
“It was crazy, we had brands like Zero and Toy Machine put on demos here,” Wheatley said. “Their tour would say D.C., Baltimore, Ledgewood and here we are, some small town 40 minutes from the city in the suburbs.”
Martin said Ledgewood’s redevelopment is the “end of an era” and that he, along with hundreds of other skaters, are grateful to have been a part of the park’s inception, growth and countless transformations.
“I just hope that as the project goes forward and the park takes on its new form, I hope it doesn’t lose its soul and the intentions we had for this place to be an escape and a paradise for local skaters,” he said. “It was cool that we could pass something down to other kids in the community.”
Have a news tip? Contact Matt Hubbard at mhubbard@baltsun.com, 443-651-0101 or @mthubb on X.
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