Updated 8:43 a.m. May 30, 2026.
State College celebrated the grand opening of its long-awaited public skatepark on Friday, marking the culmination of more than a decade of efforts and the fulfillment of a dream for many in the community.
High Point Action Sports Park, 855 W. Whitehall Rd., is a 20,000-square-foot, wheelchair accessible facility for skateboards, scooters, bikes and roller skates constructed on the former site of an unused baseball field, covering about 3 acres of the 6-acre park.
“This is a community resource that a lot of people are going to use, and it is going to bring a lot of joy to people here,” State College Mayor Ezra Nanes said. “Not just the kids or adults who like to skate, but their families or friends who could sit and watch… I could just sit here and watch this literally all day. And the park is still also a park. Even if you are not into skating, just come and hang out and enjoy the grass, sit on a beautiful bench and enjoy the park.”
Before and after remarks from local officials, kids and adults spent the day riding in State College’s first free public park designed for wheeled sports. The afternoon included BMX and scooter pro demos and a jam with MC, an open skate and DJ, area vendors and wood-fired pizza from Happy Valley Chef.
One end of the $2.4 million park is a street-style plaza with features like ledges, stairs, rails and banks designed to feel like riding in town or on campus. At the other end is a transition zone with ramps, quarterpipes and a volcano.
With a granite centerpiece, the two sections meet and blend seamlessly in the middle.
“It’s set up in a way where you can just kind of do your laps and have runs around the whole park when it’s not busy,” said John Saxton, a Centre County resident whose Skidmark Parks worked on the project and provided input for the design. “And it’s set up in a way where you can have sessions going on over there and different little pockets of the park. Lots of kids can be riding the park at the same time, even if they’re in different sections.”
The park is designed for riders of all skill levels.
Saxton has worked on action sports parks all over the world and said High Point is one of his favorites because it has “something for everyone, from the brand new kid all the way up to the seasoned professional.”
“There are some professional skateboarders out here right now; there are some professional BMXers; there are professional scooters out here right now, and they’re all having fun together,” Saxton said. “So it’s something special when you can have a park that caters to everyone almost equally, because a skatepark is very much a self-policing facility where everyone feeds off each other, and everyone helps each other. When a kid is having trouble working on a trick, the bigger kids step in and help. It’s a very cool community. That’s what the skatepark brings to the town.”
It’s taken years of discussion, planning, designing and fundraising to bring the skatepark to State College.
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 was part of capital improvement plans for years afterward.
“When the borough first began seriously studying the idea of an action sports park more than a decade ago, a lot of people didn’t think that they would ever arrive,” State College Borough Council President Evan Myers said. “There were questions about where it should go, how it would be funded, and if State College really needed an action sports park. But there were a lot of persistent people who kept showing up and advocating for a designed community space for all the things you see out here right now.”
In 2017, Orchard Park was proposed as a potential location, but that was met with opposition by neighboring residents. 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 High Point proposal, 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.
Myers chaired the ad-hoc committee and recalled nearly a dozen community meetings over the course of a year, along with focus groups and surveys to collect feedback from hundreds of residents.
“What I remember most about those days is just how passionate people were about bringing an action sports park to the borough,” Myers said. “Even when there were disagreements about locations or concerns from nearby neighborhoods, people remained engaged and focused on the objective. They kept working toward solutions. And now here we are. This park represents years of persistence from those volunteers, from advocates, borough staff and community members who refused to let the idea go away.”
In 2018, a volunteer committee formed to push the project forward, working with borough staff, Centre Region Parks and Rec and the community 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. New Line also led construction of the project, which began last summer and was largely completed over the winter.
“We’re really happy to have met up with Jake Johnson,” Tony Misiano, New Line Skateparks project manager, said. “This guy is so dedicated that he found crazy pieces of granite years ago and stored it for years. [He said] ‘I am going to get a skatepark someday for this granite,’ and here it is. So every time you are out here, you got to thank that dude.”
Financing for the project included borough funds, donations from hundreds of residents and businesses and grants from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Department of Community and Economic Development, Centre Foundation, Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, Hamer Foundation, Happy Valley Women’s Cycling, Charlene Friedman, Steve Heinz and Tony Hawk’s Skatepark Project.
Nanes said the grant from Hawk’s organization “really means a lot because that’s really one of the greatest skaters of all time, a global brand recognizing what we’re building here in State College.”
“And then all the community—this is a locally funded project as well. The borough put this seed money in and local residents and businesses put money in to make this happen. This project represents what a community can do when it sticks with an idea, really takes what a community needs and makes it happen.
Wes Fahringer, of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said the park created not just a new recreational space, but also provided important infrastructure.
“It’s not just this wonderful sculpture of skateboarding and rollerblading and biking,” Fahringer said. “There’s work done underneath that is involved — managing your stormwater and planting some trees and making this something that is a really important piece of municipal infrastructure. There’s a lot that goes on into this kind of stuff.”
Misiano said he expects the State College community will enjoy the park for a long time to come.
“Enjoy this; it’s yours for decades,” he said. “We build these things so they’re not going anywhere.”
Nanes, meanwhile, marveled at the result as he recalled growing up as a skateboarder in New York City with no nearby park designed for kids like him.
“It’s really kind of a work of art as far as parks go,” Nanes said.
High Point Action Sports Park is open daily from dawn to dusk.
