State College is ready to celebrate the grand opening of its new, years-in-the-making skatepark.
Borough leaders, volunteer committee members and residents will gather at 2 p.m. on Friday, May 29 for the celebration of High Point Action Park at 855 W. Whitehall Road.
The event will kick off with speeches and a ribbon cutting at 2 p.m., followed by an open skate/ride at 2:30 p.m. Skater, BMX and scooter pro demos will begin at 3:30 p.m., and a pro jam with an MC will start at 4:30 p.m. The festivities will conclude with an open skate and DJ from 5:30 p.m. to dusk.
An announcement from the borough states that parking is available on Stratford Drive and at Whitehall Road Regional Park.
The $2.4 million Action Sports Park was largely completed in the winter after State College Borough Council awarded construction contracts for the project to WG Land Company and New Line Skateparks FL in May and June of 2025.
The wheelchair-accessible facility for skateboards, scooters and bikes replaced the unused baseball field at High Point Park, taking up about 3 acres of the 6-acre lot. It was designed for all skill levels with amenities for park and street-style riding with ledges, stairs, rails, banks, a mini-ramp area, a brick volcano, quarterpipe, planting areas with boulders for seating spots and a center courtyard with a large granite pad.
The upper part of the design is a plaza-style park for skateboarders while the lower elevation has been refined to better support scooters and bikes.
It’s been a long road to the opening since a public skatepark was first proposed in 2013 to the Centre Region Council of Government Parks Capital Committee by BMX legend and local resident Jamie Bestwick. Borough staff began looking into the project the following year and it had been a part of capital improvement plans ever since.
In 2017, Orchard Park was proposed as a potential location, but that was met with opposition by residents of the Greentree neighborhood. An ad hoc committee was then formed and proposed several locations, before ultimately identifying High Point Park as the preferred location.
Nearby residents did not oppose the proposal for High Point Park, which is owned by the borough and maintained by Centre Region Parks and Recreation.
The underutilized High Point Park was selected in part because it’s accessible by bus, bike path and car, less than a mile from State College Area High School, Delta and Corl Street Elementary and 1.7 miles from the center of downtown.
The volunteer committee worked with the borough, Centre Region Parks and Recreation and community members since 2018 on planning, design and fundraising to help make the park a reality.
Jake Johnson, a professional skateboarder and State College native, and his father, Tim, a professor emeritus of landscape architecture at Penn State, designed the concept for the park and enlisted New Line Skateparks to develop final technical designs and construction plans.
Funding for the project includes more than $1 million in grants along with borough funds and money from a fundraising campaign led by the volunteer committee.
