Anne Arundel County, Maryland, which is home to 533 miles of shoreline, is often criticized for its disproportionately small number of public water access points. That’s why some residents were outraged when the county closed the Discovery Village boat ramp in southern Anne Arundel County this summer. Three months later, a deal has been announced to reopen the boat ramp.
As we reported in August, the ramp on Parish Creek, just south of the West River, closed July 1. The owners of Discovery Village put the entire property up for sale after the Anne Arundel County Council voted to terminate its lease. That sparked anger from water access advocates, who say Discovery Village was the only boat ramp for 20 miles—a crucial location for those who keep their boat on a trailer.
As a stopgap measure, the county negotiated water access with Parish Creek Marina to provide public access from the marina boat ramp until the end of the 2025 season.
But water access advocates pushed for a long-term solution: for Anne Arundel County to buy the Discovery Village property with county funds and develop it with the help of state grants. They envisioned not only a public boat ramp owned outright by the county, but also a possible community center on the property.
Then, on Wednesday, Oct. 15, County Executive Steuart Pittman announced a new agreement between the county and Discovery Village’s owners to reopen the ramp and restore public access.
Discovery Village Shady Side, LLC will lease the ramp to the county through July 2027 at a lower rent than the county’s previous lease. The new agreement also eliminates long-term liabilities from the previous agreement. The county says the changes will save taxpayers more than $1.5 million over the next 21 months. The parking lot will also be repaved.
“This new agreement is good news for the county, our taxpayers, and our boaters in South County,” said County Executive Steuart Pittman. “We now have a fair, fiscally responsible agreement that restores public boating access at Discovery Village.”
While the new agreement is good news for water access during the 2026 and partial 2027 boating seasons, there’s no clear answer about what will happen to boat ramp access after that. And the residents who hoped for a community center on the site will have to keep hoping.
As recently as last week, community members were still sending letters to County Executive Pittman, including the Muddy Creek Artists Guild, a well-established group of 80 artists in southern Anne Arundel County. The guild urged Pittman to invest in a community center at Discovery Village. “Every year it it becomes increasingly difficult to find available and affordable space large enough to house our shows, to the point where we will soon be faced with reducing and/or eliminating a number of activities. This problem could be resolved through the development of a South County community center at Discovery Village,” wrote Muddy Creek Artists Guild President Kendra Smith.
Lisa Arrasmith, a vocal county water access advocate, doubled down on the calls for the county to buy the property, listing the opportunities it would offer county residents. “Repurpose the two story office building in Discovery Village into a multipurpose community center. Develop the boat ramp and shoreline into a boating and maritime center. Create the Discovery Village Public Boating and Community Center as a multi-faceted resource for people both on and off the water,” she told us. “There is $3.1 million in the Anne Arundel County FY26 Boat Ramp Development account and no new boat ramp in progress. The county must buy Discovery Village, ensure permanent public access to the Discovery Village boat ramp and leverage the acquisition into a community center and wider county needs.”
While the lease agreement announcement made no mention of a possible future purchase, the county says it is looking for other public water access options. “We also continue to puruse other avenues to increase public water access in the area and countywide, said Leys.
