Baltimore County announces new master plan for Oregon Ridge Park

After soliciting feedback for more than a year, Baltimore County has finalized work on a new master plan that lays out a vision for Oregon Ridge Park.

The plan’s purpose is to provide “recommendations for park improvements and upgrades over the next twenty years, building on what works in the park and what is needed, in the form of a strategic vision and framework to guide redevelopment.”

Oregon Ridge Park is Baltimore County’s largest park and the “crown jewel” of the county’s park system, says Bob Smith, the county’s director of recreation and parks. The plan was facilitated by the landscape architecture firm Lardner/Klein, and is spearheaded by Baltimore County’s capital improvements team, led by Drew Emmer, the county’s capital planning chief, and assisted by David O’Dell, a landscape architect for the county.

The park is in Baltimore County District 3, represented by Councilman Wade Kach.

“It’s important to have a vision as to what we want to do with the park [and] to have all this input from people,” Kach says. “[The county] will have a guide.”

Public input has been critical in shaping the plan. The feedback process was extensive, going back to February 2022 and including multiple in-person meetings, online sessions, and Spanish-language outreach. All were well attended, says Smith, the rec and parks director, even though the start of the public-input period overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, Smith points out, the Baltimore County park system saw a dramatic increase in usage—an increase of as much as 200 percent—during the pandemic.

“We thought it was important to take an in-depth look at the park and ways we could improve it,” Smith says. He says the plan aims to protect the park’s natural resources, restore areas that might have been “over-loved,” generally enhance the experience of visitors, and educate the public about what’s in the park and why it matters.

How the plan is structured

The plan divides the park into three zones: a Terrace Core, encompassing the parts of the park closest to Shawan and Beaver Dam roads and including the Nature Center, Quarry Lake, and the Lodge; a Conservation Core, home to the bulk of the park’s trail system; and the Transition Core, between the two.

The plan also divides the work into three phases. Phase One focuses primarily on upgrades to and maintenance of the trail network, and also includes design work for new construction slated to occur in Phase Two. Phase Two focuses on rebuilding the Terrace Core, including construction of a new Nature Center above the beach at Quarry Lake. Phase Three shifts the focus north of Shawan Road to improvement of the fields along Cuba Road.

Oregon Ridge Park functions as two parks: one to the west encompassing the Nature Center and trail system, and the other to the east, involving goings-on in and around the park lodge, including Fourth of July fireworks and concerts by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Although usage patterns show a fairly even split between the two, most of the feedback planners received focused on the trail system. As a result, the bulk of the plan, in its initial phase at least, will aim to improve that trail system, with special attention to stream crossings that can get washed out after a heavy rainfall. 

Implementing the plan

The park’s planning document mentions at least five previous plans, one of which, in the 1970s, led to the construction of what is now the Nature Center. The current 20-year plan will span multiple administrations, and though $9 million currently exists to fund implementation, the budget environment going forward has not yet been set.

Kach, for one, doubts that implementation will take as long as 20 years, and he expects additional funds to materialize. “We’re going to see sums of money appropriated to carry out [all] phases,” he says.

This is Smith’s first time wrestling with such a beast.

“It’s a huge plan,” Smith says. “I’m not going to worry about fifteen or eighteen years from right now until we start getting work done on the most important things first.”

Besides, Smith says, implementing the plan will be an ongoing process fueled by ongoing public input. “The master plan is a guide. We’re going to continue to work with the community as we evolve.”