There’s really no such thing as the Freedom Trail yet. But if Ross Dangel has his way, that won’t be the case for long. Here’s the story of how one man’s vision and determination just might turn some unused ball fields and disconnected trails into something that makes life better for all of us.
Ross Dangel is a ten-year member of the Freedom Area Citizen’s Council (FACC), the chair of their sustainability committee (the only member, too), and what you might call a visionary. And right now he’s envisioning a running, biking, hiking trail tying Sykesville to Warfield to Springfield to Eldersburg to Freedom Park to…well who knows?
When asked how far it could go, he says, “To infinity and beyond.”
Which might be stretching it, and infringing on Buzz Lightyear’s intellectual property rights, but I like that answer. Too many people are thinking small these days. Ross Dangel is thinking big.
And if infinity’s unreachable, how about Piney Run Park? How about the reservoir? How about a green, connected community where, as Dangel puts it, “People can travel from area to area without having to drive. Imagine families walking or biking to their baseball and soccer games instead of having to take the car.”
An avid biker himself, who loves exploring the area, Dangel, who is 47 and married with three kids, has been thinking about trails for a long time and looking for a better way to get around without, as he says, “taking my life in my hands on Route 32.”
In late 2009, the FACC helped negotiate a long-term lease agreement between Springfield Hospital Center and Carroll County for some ball fields and a beautiful plot of grassy recreational potential on the Springfield grounds. The fields are intended as a sports complex managed by the Freedom Area Recreation Council (FARC), but since they’re somewhat isolated on the Center’s grounds, Dangel realized they’d have to be more noticeable and accessible before the community embraced them. (FARC has yet to prepare the fields for play.)
He says, “I wanted to make the fields more a Freedom area amenity, instead of just part of Springfield, where so many people have never even set foot. So I had to figure out how to attract people into the complex, and that’s when I really got thinking about how to use the trails.”
So what exactly is the Freedom Trail?
Well, in Boston, it’s a historic walk, but here in Carroll County, it’s an idea Dangel hopes to make a reality as early as next spring or summer – more than seven miles of safe, scenic, marked trails winding through our part of the county. There are trails in Sykesville, trails in Freedom Park, trails in Warfield. Dangel figures, why not find a way to identify them, tie them all together, enhance them, and brand them as the Freedom Trail?
He says, “For roughly the cost of a new playground, our county can create this wonderful recreational amenity that lets people bike, walk, or run safely from Eldersburg all the way to the Town of Sykesville and to Freedom Park without using Route 32. And most visitors agree that traveling through Springfield is like stepping back in time 100 years. It’s such a breathtaking setting with the fields and trees and great old buildings.”
In fact, via the Freedom Trail, you could ride a bike from Panera on Liberty Road via Georgetown Boulevard to Cooper Park in Sykesville and down to the town’s Main Street, all without setting a wheel on 26 or 32.
So how do we get started?
Of course, before anyone starts biking to infinity, or even from Sykesville to Panera, we have to actually get the thing started, and so far, nothing is guaranteed. The biggest challenge, besides acquiring various permissions and raising the money, is making a trail connection between Eldersburg and Springfield Hospital Center.
In October, accompanied by Sykesville’s Town Manager, Matt Candland, FACC President Ellen Dix, and State Delegate Susan Krebs, Dangel presented the concept to and got approval from the present Board of Commissioners to officially recognize and support the project. He also received permission from Paula Langmead, CEO of the Springfield Hospital Center, to run the trail through hospital grounds.
Once he’d secured official county planning recognition, with the help of Bruce Dutterer, County Park Planner, and Jeff Degitz, Director of Parks & Recreation, Dangel began exploring options for a trailhead – the critical connection between areas.
Dangel says, “There is no Freedom Trail without this trailhead.”
Eventually Dutterer, Degitz, and Dangel (the 3 Ds) decided the most promising approach would be to connect Eldersburg from the Eldersburg Estates housing development to Sunny Side in Springfield for an estimated price of about $62,000. Another possible option is to come in from Macbeth Way along the outside of Eldersburg Estates, but that’s a much more expensive proposition.
“Once we establish the funding,” Dangel says, “Getting the trailhead built isn’t technically complicated. It’s basically building a small bridge over a creek and storm water management area and laying less than 1,000 feet of new macadam (897 according to his bike odometer), doing a bunch of road striping, putting up some signs…and bingo, we create over seven miles of continuous trail.”
Before we discuss that big “if,” getting the money, let’s look more closely at what the trail would actually consist of. First, it would be well-marked with signs designating it the Freedom Trail. The trail’s roads and pathways would all be striped. And later, parking, benches, bike racks, and other trail amenities would be added.
If the trailhead entered Springfield from Eldersburg Estates, it would lead to the paved trail located at Sunny Side, run past the hill of nameless, numbered graves, where from 1899 to 1961, Springfield buried patients who’d donated their bodies for scientific research, then run past the new ball fields and onto Main Street on the Hospital Center’s grounds.
From here, the trail would connect to Freedom Park or Sykesville using the existing lightly used streets within the Hospital and Warfield complexes. The entire route would be painted with trail markings.
To get to Freedom Park, you would travel less than a mile from the Warfield Complex on Buttercup Road (an extension of Springfield’s Main Street), crossing Raincliffe Road into the park. Once in the park, there’s another 2.5 miles of existing bike and pedestrian trails, which would also be marked. Dangel says the distance from the new trailhead to Freedom Park is 2.5 miles.
To get to Sykesville, you would turn off Buttercup at Warfield Avenue, head around Warfield and under 32 through the Herman Tunnel (unofficially named after Jonathan Herman by me) and into Sykesville at Cooper Park. (The trail would also lead through some nice existing trails in and around the Warfield Complex.)
Dangel hopes that once in Sykesville, the trail will run through Sykesville’s streets and existing paths, tying into the existing Linear Trail in some safe, intelligent manner. The Town of Sykesville is cooperating and would most likely grant permission to put up signs and paint Freedom Trail markings on the necessary roads or sidewalks.
Okay, it sounds great, but don’t we need money?
Yes. But since most of the trails already exist, the only real costs should be the 60k plus to build the trailhead, some money to paint the roads and put up signs, and maybe some administrative fees. Considering the return on this small investment, it’s an outright bargain.
Dangel is hoping to line up several sources of funds. He’s setting up a Freedom Trail Foundation, hopefully sponsored by FACC (they’ll vote and mostly likely approve soon), to fund and help manage the project. The Freedom Trail Foundation will operate as a charitable foundation beneath and in cooperation with the Carroll Community Foundation, an organization specifically founded, as they state on their website, “to maintain and enhance the quality of life in the community of Carroll County through philanthropic means.”
The Foundation’s goal is to “receive, invest and distribute funds for charitable, cultural and educational purposes for the benefit of the citizens of Carroll County.”
They don’t mention recreation or trails in there, but Dangel has met with them, and they do indeed support similar projects and are willing and eager to help with this one in various ways, which could potentially include contributing funds, or hooking the Freedom Trail Foundation up with other organizations that may contribute funds.
Once the Freedom Trail Foundation officially exists, Dangel hopes to use it to pursue tax deductible donations. He says, “I’d love to come up with enough funds through a few foundation grants, maybe a couple large corporate sponsorships, and of course, some generous public donor support.”
What about the county?
It would be nice, of course, if the county saw the potential and beauty of the project and provided substantial funding, but the fact is, Carroll County does not appear to rank providing first-rate recreational facilities for our families, or expanding and beautifying our park system, as one of its highest priorities.
The amount of money allocated by the county for parks and recreation is abysmally low compared with that of other counties, and during the recent election for commissioner, there was endless talk of economic development, bringing business into the county, and cutting property taxes, but almost nothing about quality-of-life issues, such as this one. (Well, actually there was, but all those candidates lost by thousands of votes.)
The county has officially endorsed the project. County planners have visited the Eldersburg Estates site and are willing to oversee construction. But other than that, Dangel isn’t banking on much county assistance and certainly doesn’t expect county money to make up a significant portion of the required funding.
Dangel has discussed the issue with Doug Howard, our District 5 Commissioner-Elect, and Howard supports the project, but Howard’s will be only one vote amongst five. With the other commissioners focused on shrinking county government, cutting costs, and slashing the workforce, funding the development of a quality-of-life amenity for the Freedom District might be the last thing they want to do, no matter how much sense it makes, or no matter how much good it does the area, or the county in general.
In fact, Richard Rothschild, the new District 4 Commissioner-Elect, is openly hostile to this sort of project, and has recommended never accepting grants from the federal government, suggesting instead that we embrace an austere independence based on constitutional principles. He has gone so far as to equate projects such as this, along with the idea of promoting sustainability, with socialism and a loss of our basic freedoms.
Bottom line. If the project’s viewed strictly as a recreational amenity, don’t expect much from the county.
However
What if it’s about something more than just making life better for the people of Eldersburg and Sykesville? What if it’s about something more than strolling and biking through beautiful paths, getting out in nature, walking our dogs, biking to soccer, improving our health, increasing our safety, getting around without cars, and avoiding congested and often dangerous state roads? What if it’s about more than taking full advantage of the natural beauty of our mostly rural setting and making more grass, trees, fresh air, fields, and athletics easily and safely available to our families and children?
What if it’s also about economic development?
Dangel thinks it is. Which brings us to the Warfield Complex and the huge redevelopment opportunity that is the Springfield Hospital Center.
Doug Howard has stated that developing Warfield is one of his top priorities, if not the top priority. Other commissioners have also stated that Warfield presents the best opportunity for economic development in the county.
The buildings are there. The infrastructure is there. Nexion Health is there, the State Police training facility is there, other buildings are coming online now, slowly but inevitably. In a recent newsletter, Sykesville’s Mayor Mike Miller focused on Warfield and assured us that good things are indeed beginning to happen over there. The recession stopped things, but eventually this complex will reach its potential.
And the Freedom Trail is just one more reason it’s a terrifically attractive place to run a business. Already, at lunch time, you’ll find Nexion employees crossing Warfield Avenue and heading down into the existing trail and around the lake.
Dangel says, “If the Commissioners are convinced that Warfield represents the county’s number one economic development opportunity, then investing in this trail becomes a no-brainer. Everyone agrees we need more economic development. What could be better than bringing folks into the complex and showing off the trail to the potential investing public?
“We might get lucky with an investor or a business owner or a developer with vision who sees the huge opportunity here, and says, ‘this is where I want to be long-term.’”
So as Warfield develops and the trail connects up, it becomes an alternative way into work for local residents who work at the complex or nearby Northrop Grumman. It becomes a nice amenity for those who work in and around the Springfield Hospital Center, and it becomes a good selling point to help attract more businesses to the area.
Now we’re not just talking quality of life. We’re talking quality of work. And we’re talking more county tax revenue. Building the trail just might help attract business, and in the long run, it might help the county make money. In other words, it’s an investment.
“Look at every major redevelopment project in the region – Frederick, Baltimore, Washington – the first thing they build is trails and pathways, not buildings. The trails bring the people in and expose them to the development potential, often long before any major redevelopment gets traction. The nice thing about Springfield is that it’s not some blighted, crime-ridden area, but instead, it’s among the most beautiful settings in our entire state,” Dangel adds.
Sykesville’s Town Manager, Matt Candland agrees. He says, “Since the late nineties, the Town of Sykesville has envisioned an interconnected hiker/biker trail system throughout Sykesville that connects to Eldersburg. A well-designed trail system’s not only an amenity to local residents, it’s also an amenity to employers, such as Nexion and Northrop Grumman. Corporations are placing more importance on quality of life amenities in and around the work place, and hopefully the Freedom Trail system will help attract businesses to Warfield.”
To Infinity and Beyond
To Ross Dangel, this is just the beginning. When I ask if it’s possible to expand the trail even further, he says, “Well, maybe we’ll start with expanding to Piney Run Park and then maybe west down Liberty Road. Longer term, maybe areas already served by trails, like Liberty Reservoir, Morgan Run, the McKeldin area of Patapsco State Park, and into state park areas in Howard County.”
He laughs. And then Eldersburg’s Buzz Lightyear utters those famous words, “To infinity and beyond.”
To reach infinity, you have to take the next step and the next. The county has agreed to recognize the project and provide support. And that’s all. The Freedom Trail Foundation will be real shortly, but it has no money. We’ve barely begun the trek from Eldersburg to Sykesville, let alone the fields and paths beyond infinity.
Still, there’s a vision in place, and nothing great ever happens without one.
The Freedom Area Citizens Council saw some unused ball fields that FARC could put into use, knew they were sorely needed, and said, “Let’s get them.” Ross Dangel saw the chance to tie a bunch of trails together, and said, “Let’s connect them.” When Jonathan Herman was mayor of Sykesville, he saw the Warfield Complex sitting there and said, “Let’s buy it.” And did. For a dollar. He saw Route 32 standing between Warfield, Cooper Park, and all of Sykesville, and said, “Let’s build a tunnel. Now. While they’re working on the intersection. Or we’ll never get this chance again.”
A couple years later, that tunnel’s a stroke of genius linking Herman’s vision to Dangel’s and potentially linking the isolated island that is Sykesville to not only Warfield, but all the way to Eldersburg, and perhaps someday well beyond.
Now we have a chance to open a whole new set of beautiful and easily accessible ball fields in a fabulous pastoral setting, tie the Town of Sykesville to the sprawling collection of disconnected developments that is Eldersburg, and hopefully, to turn these two very different places into something more like one, with a thriving economic engine on a beautiful campus of historic buildings at its heart. All supported by the interconnecting arteries known as the Freedom Trail.
Buzz Lightyear wants to make it happen. The FACC wants to make it happen. The Town of Sykesville wants to make it happen. Let’s do it. Now. Recession be damned. Who knows if we’ll ever have this opportunity again?
Notes on this article: We realize you probably have other questions, or that you might be interested in helping with the project. Please bring your questions and ideas to our Facebook page at Facebook.com/sykesvilleonline. We will be putting up a slide show shortly with views from the path. We’ll also be putting together a question and answer piece and hopefully a trail map over the coming weeks. We’ll be happy to get answers to any of your questions.
There will be follow-on articles about the Springfield ball fields and Carroll County’s approach to parks and recreation.{jcomments on}